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

[zackw]

I have a small issue. The script outputs the links in source code with unencoded ampersands.
When viewing source I might see this:

....k.com/rbs_banner.php?id=4&userid=40847"....

But I want to see this:

....k.com/rbs_banner.php?id=4&userid=40847"....

The reason is because it won't validate in W3C. Can someone tell me what adjustment to make in php perhaps so those can be encoded with an htmlentities or something?

Thanks!

[Videx]

Originally Posted by zackw

The reason is because it won't validate in W3C.

Sorry I don't know the answer. But a question: What advantage does validation in W3C give you? I mean, does it work as it is, and if so, why should you want to change it?

[zackw]

Originally Posted by Videx

Sorry I don't know the answer. But a question: What advantage does validation in W3C give you? I mean, does it work as it is, and if so, why should you want to change it?

Because it's good to follow standards. And when it comes to encoding html entities, it's safer in terms of URL hack attempts and MySQL injections.
It's common and normal practice to always encode URLs. Plus there is the satisfaction of having valid markup.

I imagine it is a very small thing indeed to encode the URL before echoing it, which is why somebody might know what file needs the edit added.

[Paul.]

OK, I'm probably being very thick here.. but I am confuzzled.

addons
upload
product-rbs
Rotating Banner System-EN

The above looks fine.
But when I look in the 'addons' folder, I've no idea where to put the rbs_iframa.php file.

Then in the 'upload' folder, I know where to put the details of the 'admincp' folder and the 'includes' folder.. but where do the three other files go? rbs_banner.php - rbs_stats.php - rbs_wrapper

I've read the PDF but don't really understand it when it says place them in the forum home.

[Videx]

1) Don't screw with addons until you have it working. Then if you really need that iframe, go for it.
2) Don't over think it. Just rename 'uploads' to 'forum' (or wherever you have your forum installed), then in an FTP program just drop it on /public_html. Everything will go where it belongs.

[jjdurrant]

I installed and uploaded files but I am not seeing "Advertising" in admincp

[Videx]

Originally Posted by jjdurrant

I installed and uploaded files but I am not seeing "Advertising" in admincp

It's supposed to be on the left pane just above Styles and Templates (vb4 only). If you can't find it anywhere, you should do some searches at vb.com and try to figure out why it's missing.

[Paul.]

Originally Posted by Videx

1) Don't screw with addons until you have it working. Then if you really need that iframe, go for it.
2) Don't over think it. Just rename 'uploads' to 'forum' (or wherever you have your forum installed), then in an FTP program just drop it on /public_html. Everything will go where it belongs.

Thanks for this.
So when I go into my folder named 'forum', I just stick the three files there? ( rbs_banner.php - rbs_stats.php - rbs_wrapper )

I've installed odd plugins successfully in the past, but still manage to confuse myself!

Edit: I think I've failed..

I have this error message appearing at the very top of my forum:

Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Empty delimiter in [path]\includes\functions.php(7246) : eval()'d code on line 93

[sonic83]

Originally Posted by Videx

This mod doesn't actually use vb much at all (except for the admincp page), so it works with all versions. Your original question was very confusing and made no sense, having to do with renaming folders or something.

Thanks for your responses.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Paul.

I have this error message appearing at the very top of my forum:

Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Empty delimiter in [path]\includes\functions.php(7246) : eval()'d code on line 93

That doesn't sound like an RBS error. But a site search (on 'Empty delimiter') turns up lots of hits here on vb.org and I imagine vb.com also. You're going to have to dig through some of those old threads and see what the problem is.

Yes, those files go in your forum root right next to register.php and forum.php.