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 Apolo.

Hi VBLUIS,

If you want to display a side banner throughout all pages, you can either modify the templates on your own or use a mod for this purpose. For instance:

Everywhere Sidebar 4 VB4
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=233871

Then, you can insert the RBS code in there for the side banner to be displayed.

:up:

You may also insert the banner placeholder into a HTML static block and use just the standard forum sidebar.

I usually have also a custom template in order to remove the block title and other adjustments, such as:

Template: block_html_ads

<li>
    <div class="block smaller">
        <div class="widget_content blockbody floatcontainer">
        <div id="block_html_{vb:raw blockinfo.blockid}" class="blockrow">
            {vb:raw content}
        </div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class="underblock"></div>
</li>

[Apolo.]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

You may also insert the banner placeholder into a HTML static block and use just the standard forum sidebar.

I usually have also a custom template in order to remove the block title and other adjustments, such as:

Template: block_html_ads

Does this work forum-wide? Because as far as I know, the standard sidebar is not displayed when you are checking a thread, etc.

[sonic83]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

:up:

You may also insert the banner placeholder into a HTML static block and use just the standard forum sidebar.

I usually have also a custom template in order to remove the block title and other adjustments, such as:

Template: block_html_ads

<li>
    <div class="block smaller">
        <div class="widget_content blockbody floatcontainer">
        <div id="block_html_{vb:raw blockinfo.blockid}" class="blockrow">
            {vb:raw content}
        </div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class="underblock"></div>
</li>

Thank you y2ksw.
I have a question related to one that did in the past, I hope you can help me.

My forum just get by "google Analitycs" 600 visitors per day. Is that "Google Analytics" has access to many pages of the forums.

And according to statistics from vbulletin receive about 150 visitors per day recorded.

I have sold a banner. This banner appears on all pages and for everyone

But in one day telling me 33,000 impressions. There may be something that interferes with the Rotating Banner System? I have doubts that have been loaded 33,000 times the pages that have that banner (that is all, is global).

There any checks I can do?

That number of visitors / impressions can reach you receive?

thanks

PS: sorry for my English if at some point may sound bad. The schools are very bad Spanish with other languages.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Apolo.

Does this work forum-wide? Because as far as I know, the standard sidebar is not displayed when you are checking a thread, etc.

The everywhere sidebar shows almost everywhere. However if you have the CMS, you also will have to create a most similar widget.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by VBLUIS

Thank you y2ksw.
I have a question related to one that did in the past, I hope you can help me.

My forum just get by "google Analitycs" 600 visitors per day. Is that "Google Analytics" has access to many pages of the forums.

And according to statistics from vbulletin receive about 150 visitors per day recorded.

I have sold a banner. This banner appears on all pages and for everyone

But in one day telling me 33,000 impressions. There may be something that interferes with the Rotating Banner System? I have doubts that have been loaded 33,000 times the pages that have that banner (that is all, is global).

There any checks I can do?

That number of visitors / impressions can reach you receive?

thanks

PS: sorry for my English if at some point may sound bad. The schools are very bad Spanish with other languages.

600 GA visitors likely will visit more than just one page. 150 vB visitors are logged users in a day. 33k impressions is a pretty high number, but considered that GA fails to collect all visitors and that 600 visitors may look into 50-60 pages each, it is a fairly possible value.

If you have server side statistics, such as Webalizer, the real page count may be much closer to the impression count. However, Webalizer counts only unique entries, thus the single page count is at Pages + (Hits - Files).

[sonic83]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

600 GA visitors likely will visit more than just one page. 150 vB visitors are logged users in a day. 33k impressions is a pretty high number, but considered that GA fails to collect all visitors and that 600 visitors may look into 50-60 pages each, it is a fairly possible value.

If you have server side statistics, such as Webalizer, the real page count may be much closer to the impression count. However, Webalizer counts only unique entries, thus the single page count is at Pages + (Hits - Files).

Thank you y2ksw.

[Apolo.]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

The everywhere sidebar shows almost everywhere. However if you have the CMS, you also will have to create a most similar widget.

Ah, you mean the Everywhere Sidebar mod I quoted myself earlier. Yes, I know it allows for the sidebar to be displayed "everywhere", as the name of the mod implies.

When you mentioned the "standard forum sidebar" I thought you meant the standard sidebar feature offered by default by vBulletin, which as far as I know, it is displayed at the main forum page only.

[tamiyausa]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I haven't looked into VBadvanced CMPS lately ... what version is it you have?

all curent on both

VB and VBCMPS

VBCMPS
Current Version: 4.2.1
Released: 06-13-2012

[acast]

Hi. Did anybody solve the problem of the flash banners which opens in a new tab?

I was thinking that, perhaps, if we disable the link option of the banners won't do it. Anybody knows how i can i do it?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by acast

Hi. Did anybody solve the problem of the flash banners which opens in a new tab?

I was thinking that, perhaps, if we disable the link option of the banners won't do it. Anybody knows how i can i do it?

You may try to use the HTML code of the banner instead of using the wrapper, but I rather suggest to fix the banner code. Most first time banner designers make errors, one of which is keeping the banner in front of all contents, and the others are mainly related to all kind of redirection errors. All problems which are not fixed by the wrapper, are generally beginner errors. Personally, I send the banners back until they are fixed, and there was never ever one publisher who failed to make it right, sooner or later