Miscellaneous Hacks - Rotating Banner System

With the Rotating Banner System software, you may publish literally anywhere standard banners and advertising, with no restriction but your imagination. Unlike many other products, it allows to show an unlimited amount of banners and advertising, which are randomly shown at the places you choose, and you may refer generically to an Ad by using specific placeholders.

Also the management is straight-forward and simple to use. Forum administrators with maintenance rights may add, edit and delete records from the Administration Control Panel (ACP), one of each representing a banner. After saving the new banner settings, they are immediately visible at your board.

Compatibility: from vBulletin 3.6.5 onwards

By the way, I do also install the hack on your boards, but since I am very, very busy, it may take some time (weeks) until it gets done.


Tutorials:

• How-to create my first banner (Flash).

Updates:

• 2.0.1: Simple click tracker added, HTML help included.
• 2.0.3: Small bug fixes; additional banner list, navigation bar, E-Mail field for banner event notifications and automatic save on scroll setting; absolute URL to rbs_banner.php in order to allow click tracking on non-standard pages; supported languages: English, Italian; Help file clean-up.
• 2.0.5: Small bug fixes; additional details in banner list; email notification for epired banners.
• 2.0.6: vbCMS compatibility bug fix; additional banner lists.
• 2.0.7: Usergroups filter: now it is possible to define a list of usergroups which may show a banner; additional vbCMS compatibility bug fix.
• 2.0.8: Various fixes and most of all, inclusion of the right files: admin_rbs.php, cpnav_rbs.xml
• 2.0.9: Extra comma fix in new record creation.
• 2.1.0: Fix for an occasional banner type selection bug, when the sample banners have been deleted or disabled.
• 2.2.0 (Major upgrade): Up to 10 different banner locations. Requires changes to your existing placeholders in your templates, since a more generic format has been chosen. If you don't need more than 2 different locations, you don't need to upgrade. Changed files: rbs_banner.php, admin_rbs.php
• 2.2.1: Minor bug fix in files: admin_rbs_h_banner_list.php, admin_rbs_v_banner_list.php
• 2.2.1: Hotfix for Max Clicks saving bug.
• 2.2.2: More listings and less files. PDF Help. Separate Italian add-ons and help. Duplicate button.
• 2.2.3: Minor bug fixes. Changed files: product-rbs.xml
• 2.2.4: Flash Banner support (beta). Changed files: product-rbs.xml, rbs_wrapper.swf, admin_rbs.php, English Help.
• 2.2.5: Hotfix for vBulletin 4.0.2 compatibility bug.
• 2.2.6: Checking for installed Flash Wrapper rbs_wrapper.swf; A few English FAQ; Help files. Changed files: product-rbs.xml
• 2.3.0 (Major upgrade): New modules: Delete Expired Banners, Disable Expired Banners; Detail Banner Statistics with unique access key for your customers; Updated help; Changed files: all.
• 2.3.1: Hotfix for missing field in rbs_hist table. Changed files: none, just update product.
• 2.3.2: Added: Unsupported option for setting any number of available positions between 1 and big bang. Fixed: Small bug and speed issues. Removed: Italian translation. Italians may now request support at www.vbulletin.it. Changed files: admin_rbs.php.
• 2.3.3: Fix: Copy selected forum ID's during banner duplication. Changed: start and end hours for new banners are set to 0:00 and 23:59 respectively. Changed files: admin_rbs.php.
• 2.3.4: Option: Send Mail Before. This option allows to schedule expiring banners differently. New variables for emails: $rbs_enddate: This variable holds the formatted banner ending date and time based on the standard formats for date and time in vBulletin settings; $rbs_name: This variable holds the banner name. EMail Notifications option description: Added direct links to the email phrases for quick changes. Changed files: rbs_mail_cron.php.
• 2.4.0 (Major upgrade): Removed: Option to enable or disable mailing. Banners with email addresses to notify are handled. Setting to reset mailing in single banners. Now, if mailing should be repeated, you will have to edit the banner from phpMyAdmin. Added: Order links in lists. The initial state is ordered by ID, as before. By clicking the titles, the other voices can be ordered. Clicking twice inverts the order. This works in all lists. Options to prevent counting and reducing thus a tiny bit of load. A new bunch of demo banners for new installations. Demo banners are locked into database in order to avoid 30% of the questions because of the 'experts' deleting them before trying the product. They can be disabled and modified though. The true experts can delete them after all testing from the database by using phpMyAdmin without side effects. Changes: Phrase for emailing about expiring banners, now also with direct links to the phrases. Demo banners. Our old publisher ID is replaced with the new ones, and old demo banners are updated with the new ones, if found. The functions have been exported to includes/functions_rbs.php. This makes the product code smaller and easier to maintain, and runs faster on sites where caching/acceleration is enabled. Changed Files: all *.php
• 2.4.1: Option Likelihood. This new option adds a weight to banners and allows thus to show one banner more often than another. The default weight is 100%. We also make sure that the final date of the default banners falls into a valid range. Changed files: includes/functions_rbs.php and rbs_stats.php.
• 2.4.2: Workaround for update sequence problems.

Hacks and unsupported add-ons:

• Banner Rotator Widget To CMS
• Rotate banners in-place
• Italian Translation

[NinjaKane]

Is there any way to weight how often banners are shown? IE banner 1 is more important and is shown 3 times every 10 rotations? Or is it completely random?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by heatherw610

Hello, when I have 2-3 banners in, every so often it will show nothing. Its like it goes through them all and then will "run out" so that space on my forum is like there was nothing ever there. Anyone know how to fix this?

If you have, say 3 banners in your database and 10 placeholders on one page, only 3 positions are filled.

Any other reason why banners show or less depend on your filters. Or maybe on content or page caching. Or on some software, which removes HTML comments.

On a standard installation and no filters, the banners will show up all times, guaranteed.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by NinjaKane

Is there any way to weight how often banners are shown? IE banner 1 is more important and is shown 3 times every 10 rotations? Or is it completely random?

You may weight a banner by simple duplication. If you have 2 banners and banner 1 has to show up 2:1, duplicate banner 1 once.

For the rest, it is completely random.

[heatherw610]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

If you have, say 3 banners in your database and 10 placeholders on one page, only 3 positions are filled.

Any other reason why banners show or less depend on your filters. Or maybe on content or page caching. Or on some software, which removes HTML comments.

On a standard installation and no filters, the banners will show up all times, guaranteed.

Thank you.

Where can I edit the 10 placeholders to the number of banners I actually have?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by heatherw610

Thank you.

Where can I edit the 10 placeholders to the number of banners I actually have?

You assign to each banner a placeholder (position) at creation or edit time, and insert one or more into your templates (any).

If you need to change the global placeholder format, go into the options. Please make sure to understand first how this system works. Normally there is no need to change any of your settings.

[Fungsten]

Originally Posted by Scooterpig

We want to put our banners to in the Header to the right of the logo but can't work it out. Can anyone please tell me what template or where I put the code as per the attached pic for it to show up underneath the Welcome and above the Search?

Thank you..

Same here!

[Flyte]

We are looking for a banner rotation mod that constantly rotates and not just at page refresh. Does this work that way?

Thanks in advance.

[heatherw610]

Originally Posted by Flyte

We are looking for a banner rotation mod that constantly rotates and not just at page refresh. Does this work that way?

Thanks in advance.

It has that option in the admin CP but I have never used it that way.

[wsmallwood]

Okay, I have it installed. Everything seems to be there. Your tutorial indicates the two default banner will show up without doing anything. I don't see anything. What to do?

[wampforum]

I have this set up and everything works fine except the clicks - it doesnt record any. Am I missing something? (I have the click option ticked!!)