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

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by desmomax

I am using vbulletin 3.8.7 patch level 3, is this mod working with my version? many thanks
is any italian translation for my vbulletin version?

Yes, and yes: http://www.vbulletin.it/14-vbulletin...-banner-system

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by DonLKSAB

I have been running the rotater for some while on my sandbox setup. And it works perfect.
But now im installing it on my real system and i get a problem.
I use the iframe files to display some of my banners and for some reason it shows me the full page in every iframe.
So i have my page with a duplicate of each page in every iframe.

Any ideas?

Maybe there is a redirect at .htaccess level?

[DonLKSAB]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Maybe there is a redirect at .htaccess level?

How would that look?
I need to know what to look for :-)

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by DonLKSAB

How would that look?
I need to know what to look for :-)

No idea ... sandboxes are usually less restrictive and behave better than production sites. One suspect is about fully qualified URL's. Eventually your iframes refer still to your sandbox and the redirect in production fills the iframe with the full page. Thus you would have to create an exception or revisit the iframe code.

[Cicada]

I'm stil; unsure -- does this addon allow me to place banners between posts?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Cicada

I'm stil; unsure -- does this addon allow me to place banners between posts?

No, this mod allows you to randomly rotate banners via placeholder(s).

There are various ways to get vbulletin to put a banner where you want it, including between posts. If it's only one banner, you don't need this mod.

[rhody401]

It'll do it if you change the postbit code and insert the trigger(s). I have it display with this mod every 5th post, and also after the last post. This is the code I used, which I believe I found from a previous post in this thread:

PHP Code:

BANNER AFTER LAST POST HACK Added this mod to our forum on 3/1/12 

GO TO: Admin Console -> Styles & Templates -> Style Manager -> edit template ->  postbit templates -> postbit_legacy  

......at the END add this, if you want it to display random ad after the LAST post:

<vb:if condition="$post['islastshown']">
 <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div><br />
</vb:if> 


.....at the VERY END add this:  (puts random ad after 5th and 10th posts)

<vb:if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread' AND (($post['postcount'] % 15 == 10) OR $post['postcount'] == 10)">
    <div class="thread_controls">
        <div style="width: 100%; text-align: center">
            <!--@vbbanners:0@-->
        </div>
    </div>
<vb:elseif condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread' AND (($post['postcount'] % 15 == 5) OR $post['postcount'] == 5)" />
    <div class="thread_controls">
        <div style="width: 100%; text-align: center">
            <!--@vbbanners:0@-->
        </div>
    </div>
</vb:if> 


Hope this is helpful! We LOVE the RBS add-on!

[johnscanlan2]

I have tried a couple of these rotating banner mods over the many years of using vB. This will be my last. Simply because it works. Once you figure it out, you quickly find that you can put the placeholder any place you want correctly.

I love it!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by johnscanlan2

I have tried a couple of these rotating banner mods over the many years of using vB. This will be my last. Simply because it works. Once you figure it out, you quickly find that you can put the placeholder any place you want correctly.

I love it!

Thanks

[webmaster74]

Hi. What is the meaning of the star next to the name of the banner in the banner list ?