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

[juanpablo]

YEEEEEEEES Sir!, that´s so right, now I Get IT, So simple, the best Hack!! THANK YOU for you explanation!!

[poromenos]

i am currently using vbadvanced as a portal.I want to have a different banner at the main page of my site(vbadvanced main page).How can i do this with your hack?I only see the forums when i go to select where the image will be shown.Any help will be extremely appreciated!!

Thanks in advance

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by poromenos

i am currently using vbadvanced as a portal.I want to have a different banner at the main page of my site(vbadvanced main page).How can i do this with your hack?I only see the forums when i go to select where the image will be shown.Any help will be extremely appreciated!!

Thanks in advance

You may setup a banner with the Forum Home option checked. This banner will show on all pages which have no specific forum id, such as the vbAdvanced home. If you have no Forum Home banners you are set.

However, if you have banners which show on all forums (no forum selected) or Forum Home, they also will appear on those pages. Thus, you must assign explicitly the forums to all banners in order to avoid they are appearing at unwanted places.

Anyway, it is currently not possible to assign a banner to a specific place (and probably never will be). The only possibility would be to "abuse" the vertical banner placeholder for telling it should be used in vbAdvanced instead elsewhere. This requires you don't have vertical banners in Forum Home, or vice-versa.

[SpiderFive]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Try to rename rbs_url_sanity inside the product installation file product-rbs.xml to something else, e.g. rbs_url_sanity2. This should fix it. I'll repair this ASAP.

Sorry, this didn't fix the problem ....

[RichieBoy67]

Can we use more than one place holder in a single template? Like say I wanted to have 2 --460 by 60 banners next to each other but both having multiple rotastional banners behind them... Is there any way to do this???

Thanks alot...

webdevoman

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by SpiderFive

Sorry, this didn't fix the problem ....

The new version should fix it though ... the conflicting function is renamed everywhere in the product.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by RichieBoy67

Can we use more than one place holder in a single template? Like say I wanted to have 2 --460 by 60 banners next to each other but both having multiple rotastional banners behind them... Is there any way to do this???

Thanks alot...

webdevoman

You can use as many placeholders you wish. You only have to ensure they are not messing up your page.

For example, if you have two wide banners horizontally next to each other, they may stretch the page a little

[RichieBoy67]

How can I have 2 different place holders in a single template displaying different banners when placeholders are displayed by using "@vbbanners@"--If there was an easy way to add more place holders like maybe "@vbbanners@1" "@vbbanners@2" etc...

Am I correct?

Thanks,

webdevoman

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by RichieBoy67

How can I have 2 different place holders in a single template displaying different banners when placeholders are displayed by using "@vbbanners@"--If there was an easy way to add more place holders like maybe "@vbbanners@1" "@vbbanners@2" etc...

Am I correct?

Thanks,

webdevoman

You may use as many @vbbanners@ placeholders you need in a single page, and the procedure will show for each instance a different banner - if there are so many in your database (else blank).

Currently there are no other placeholders available, but you may user the vertical one if you have only horizontal banners (or vice-versa), instead.

[RichieBoy67]

You are saying that if I placed two placeholders in a single template right next to each other they would not display a duplicate rotation?