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]

While adding some of the already requested features, revisiting the code, taking notes for the bloody beginners guide and general brainstorming, this is the one of the few occasions to get your 'last minute' smart features added.

Fore the next (coming) release we have:
+ 3 new options for disabling counters and squeeze a tiny bit of performance.
+ default banners locked into database; avoids me to explain how to get banners running and waste my time, while the 'experts' have them already deleted ; they can be modified though.
+ unsigned integers for all those database values which can't be less than 0.
+ external functions file adds php caching if there is one, thus enhances loading and esecution speed and generally reduces memory footprint a little; also solves the rare problem where functions are loaded twice.
+ width and height (if > 0) for img tags.

We won't add now:
- native in-place rotating, because it would add too many new options and a lot of questions I may not answer to.
- image rotation from a folder (N images for 1 banner). it was a nice idea, but unefficient in real live; maybe another time.
- style exclusion; there is no efficient way to know which style is running while handling the final output.
- section exclusion; would be another good reason why banners would not show up at all.
- banner payment, all the related front- and backend forms, scheduling and mails.

Checked:
- mailing feature: works! but it has also a relative option which must be enabled, and a cronjob which must be enabled, too.

[y2ksw]

BTW, I'm currently changing my publisher ID, thus the default banners may not show before the new release.

[Videx]

Feature requests:

• Change the text from "Please list here one or more mail addresses to inform about banner events." to "A list of email addresses that will receive expiration notices".
• Add an option to send expiration notices x days prior to expiration.
• Add links to the phrase with the body and subject of the expiration emails.
• Clarify option/text "Reset Notifications - If this option is checked, email notifications are enabled again.". There is no apparent reason expiration emails should be disabled, and no option to do it manually, so there's no need to 'enable them again'.

[Gripi]

Feature request:

Banner List > Able to sort the list by position number

thank you

[bimmerbuffs]

When do you anticipate the new release to be available?

[MatiasCandy]

This quit working for me when upgrade to 4.1.11. Anyone else having issues?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bimmerbuffs

When do you anticipate the new release to be available?

Originally Posted by MatiasCandy

This quit working for me when upgrade to 4.1.11. Anyone else having issues?

I'm waiting for my Google Publisher Code. Until then, I can't publish the upgrade, the default banners will not show up and it may look as if it doesn't work - but it surely is

[rhody401]

I upgraded from 4.1.10 to 4.1.11, and all is well here. Granted, I'm just using png files with links - not adsense.

[bposner]

for some reason the banners, even though have the correct url, are linking to:

"http://www.forumname.com/forum/www.f...?id=3&userid=1"
Thoughts?

(site name changed for this post)

[bposner]

Originally Posted by MatiasCandy

This quit working for me when upgrade to 4.1.11. Anyone else having issues?

Yes, banners are not linking to url, it adds a 2nd link, like this "www.forumname.com/forum/www.forumname.com/forum/rbs_banner.php?id=3&userid=1"