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

[bad2dbone]

But anyways people got everything going just really don't know where to put the text code i put it in the text box and position horizontal position 0

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by toofazt

I'm trying to figure out how to enable click tracking for a link in a text ad. You had posted the info below but I can't figure out the code... If you could elaborate, I would greatly appreciate it!

Oh, finally a real question

You may add another banner with click tracking enabled, which however never shows up (choose a location which isn't shown at your forums). Then, link this banner in your text ad and you are done. The link looks like: http://www.domain.tld/[forum/]rbs_banner.php?id=N, where N is the id of your hidden banner.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bad2dbone

do you just have to install it n enable in order for it to work?

You will also need to make changes to your templates and add a few banners of your choice, as indicated in the included help files and the additional Flash movie linked in the very first post

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Videx

My answer describes standard procedure for all mods. Your question and this response to my very reasonable answer is the attitude. I mean, do you want us to install it, sell ads, and make banners for you too?

I would like some coffee, please

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I would like some coffee, please

Thanks Giovanni . I spilled my coffee laughing when I read that response ...

Appreciate all your mods and particularly the quick support you've provided us, which is why we've sent you several PayPal donations for different mods you've written. This one works really well for us, as does the "import images" one which continues to function flawlessly for us. :up:

Regards,
Doug

[toofazt]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Oh, finally a real question

You may add another banner with click tracking enabled, which however never shows up (choose a location which isn't shown at your forums). Then, link this banner in your text ad and you are done. The link looks like: http://www.domain.tld/[forum/]rbs_banner.php?id=N, where N is the id of your hidden banner.

Perfect. Do you know if linking the URL like this would have a negative effect search engine wise compared to just linking the website directly without the counter?

Thanks for your help!

[Slayerz]

Could this be a banner rotator to replace where the vbulletin logo is I'd like to put my own banners and rotate them,

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Slayerz

Could this be a banner rotator to replace where the vbulletin logo is I'd like to put my own banners and rotate them,

Probably. But then where are you going to put your forum's logo?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Slayerz

Could this be a banner rotator to replace where the vbulletin logo is I'd like to put my own banners and rotate them,

I haven't tried it yet, but the header template may be a working area, too.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by toofazt

Perfect. Do you know if linking the URL like this would have a negative effect search engine wise compared to just linking the website directly without the counter?

Thanks for your help!

External links should be linked with rel="nofollow", while using an internal redirect has about the same effect. A direct link to another site (no rel attribute) has only sense if it is a business partner and you wish to exchange banners for ranking reasons. A directly linked external site reduces the own ranking of page by 1 point, while using rel="nofollow" does not have side effects.