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

[CruiserCommando]

The manual I have doesn't seem to have the instructions necessary, can someone send me the manual they are referring to so that i may compare?

[attroll]

I have all the banners working now except flash banners.
I have flash banner check marked
I have the banner width set to 400
I have the banner height set to 50
I have the dates set correctly

Here is the flash that I am trying to display.
www.whiteblaze.net/banners/at-topo.swf

Thank you

[attroll]

Originally Posted by attroll

I have all the banners working now except flash banners.
I have flash banner check marked
I have the banner width set to 400
I have the banner height set to 50
I have the dates set correctly

Here is the flash that I am trying to display.
www.whiteblaze.net/banners/at-topo.swf

Thank you

I got it working.
I had to check mark "Flash Banner: embed Tag".

[Videx]

Originally Posted by CruiserCommando

The manual I have doesn't seem to have the instructions necessary, can someone send me the manual they are referring to so that i may compare?

I agree the way that pdf manual was written it will fly right over the heads of many users. It needs a "Quick setup" on page 1 that tells you to simply:

1. Go to AdminCP>Advertising>Add new Ad
2. Click "Above Footer", name the ad "RBS 0 Above Footer" and paste this into the Ad HTML box: "<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>"
3. Hit Save.

... then continue with setting up your first non-flash simple test banner. At this point there's so much confusion I think a test banner or two - simple .jpgs - should probably just be included.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Videx

I agree the way that pdf manual was written it will fly right over the heads of many users. It needs a "Quick setup" on page 1 that tells you to simply:

1. Go to AdminCP>Advertising>Add new Ad
2. Click "Above Footer", name the ad "RBS 0 Above Footer" and paste this into the Ad HTML box: "<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>"
3. Hit Save.

... then continue with setting up your first non-flash simple test banner. At this point there's so much confusion I think a test banner or two - simple .jpgs - should probably just be included.

Right!

Attending other quick help

[Videx]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Attending other quick help

You do a lot of good work on this mod. If you need help, just ask. But I only run simple banners myself so I'd be useless trying to help anyone get Flash working.

[CruiserCommando]

thanks videx, that information I'm sure will be most helpful, now I just have to figure out what is going on with my advertisement section of the AdminCP, everytime I click on manage ads, or add new ad, it simple shows a blank page, and when I try to navigate to another part of the admincp, the blank page persists to the point where I have to reload the page....fun stuff. Thanks again, I'll let you know when its up and running.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by CruiserCommando

it simple shows a blank page,

https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/blank_pages

[y2ksw]

Blank pages may be caused also from failing to load external content, such as java-script contents from advertising servers.

[Londonladadz]

Hi everyone,

I feel like such a noob, I uploaded the files via FTP then went into my admin cp and add/import plugins. However I get this error:
Please upload the files that came with the product before installing or upgrading!

Missing files: (It says nothing here!)

Can anyone point me in the right direction of whats going wrong!

Many Thanks