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 pitzerwm

Ok, I am a noobie, and I think that I installed it as per instructions, and I do have a sample/default banner at the bottom of my page/forum. What I can't seem to find is where to add more banners. I am the admin as well as the janitor.

Where exactly do I find that last screen shot.

Thanks

You can add, enable, edit, delete and list banners from the Admin CP, Menu - (at bottom) Rotating Banner System.

[pitzerwm]

I assume that you mean in the VB options, the first menu item? When I click on VB options, I see the "rotating banners" near the bottom, when I click on that, I see the "Rotating Banner System Options" but I don't see any place to go from there.

If I go to Products, I see it "installed info" but I see no menu?

BTW, I'm at 3.6 version

Thanks

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pitzerwm

I assume that you mean in the VB options the first menu item? When I click on VB options, I see the "rotating banners" near the bottom, when I click on that, I see the "Rotating Banner System Options" but I don't see any place to go from there.

If I go to Products, I see it "installed" but I see no menu?

BTW, I'm at 3.6 version

Thanks

I mean the vbulletin menu (bottom left), not the options list. The menu where you select the options etc.

If you can't see the entry, you are probably not having maintenance rights. The "Rotating Banner System" Menu should be found just below Maintenance.

[pitzerwm]

Ok, at least we are making progress, I own the damn thing and there is no one else, how can't I have maintenance rights? How do I fix this?

I looked at the admin permissions and I have clicked yes to all of them including Maintenance "tools"

[pitzerwm]

OK!!!!! There is no doubt that you are one smart dude, and have given all of us a useful mod and I wish you continued success in everything you do, but you missed one small detail, you need to log out and log back in to see the menu option.

I haven't tried it, but I'm sure that it work as expected now.

[y2ksw]

Are you shouting at me?

In the description of the plugin it says:

Compatibility: from vBulletin 3.6.5 onwards

Before 3.6.5, there was some problem with correctly loading and installing the XML, due to an additional voice and generally because of the new plugin system, introduced in 3.6.0 and fixed in 3.6.5.

It may be possible you need to logout and login on 3.6, or simply refresh, I can't remember. It is years ago I've the last time looked into it. Anyway, the code changes are not such I would suspect a broken compatibility. I'm happy you can see the menu entry now, and add your own banners

[pitzerwm]

I would never shout at you, I think that you have spent a ton of time developing and maintaining this, and have a ton of patience, with us noobies, and just dump asses. I missed that info. my bad, of course. I'm in 3.6.8

I was able to get images to work, animated gifs, and I said yes to "enable clicks" but so far it isn't counting clicks. I see that you set "limit" to 0 for "no limit", and see that no matter what you set it at, it reverts to "0".

Any direction, I'm sure that it is on my end?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pitzerwm

I would never shout at you, I think that you have spent a ton of time developing and maintaining this, and have a ton of patience, with us noobies, and just dump asses. I missed that info. my bad, of course. I'm in 3.6.8

I was able to get images to work, animated gifs, and I said yes to "enable clicks" but so far it isn't counting clicks. I see that you set "limit" to 0 for "no limit", and see that no matter what you set it at, it reverts to "0".

Any direction, I'm sure that it is on my end?

Never mind ...

I'll install 3.6.8 and see what's going on.

[y2ksw]

I have added a hotfix for 2.2.1 which saves the Max. Clicks value correctly. Thanks for dicovering this bug ... seems that nobody ever used it

The only affected file is admin_rbs.php in your forum/admincp folder.

For the rest I have verified (once again) that the product runs perfectly well on 3.6.8. Due to a refresh problem, after the product installation it is necessary to reload the whole page in order to view the menu entries at bottom.

[pitzerwm]

Many thanks again for being so professional.

It does indeed work. I just checked it a bit, and I'm not positive that setting the Max to 0 works right, so to be safe, I just put it at 1M. I'm busy adding the banners before I start replacing the system that I have. Will post back when I have a chance. Now, I just have to find that "script" to make it work in regular HTML and I'm golden