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

[bada_bing]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

a   would insert a fixed space between two HTML text elements, thus:

<!--@vbbanners:0@--><!--@vbbanners:0@-->

become:

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->&nbsp;<!--@vbbanners:0@-->

Giovanni

I have done something simular on my site except I have an issue where if the banners are side by side and you shrink your browser it throws the banners off allighment. Any way to wrap the banners so they can adjust depending on your browser window? The issue now is that they are fixed and assume the browser window is at least a minimum size but when you shring the window or view the site from a smart know the banners are all off

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bada_bing

Giovanni

I have done something simular on my site except I have an issue where if the banners are side by side and you shrink your browser it throws the banners off allighment. Any way to wrap the banners so they can adjust depending on your browser window? The issue now is that they are fixed and assume the browser window is at least a minimum size but when you shring the window or view the site from a smart know the banners are all off

These are all HTML issues, where I am, honestly spoken, unable to help.

With vBulletin 3 you will have to handle problems with tables and most of them can't be fixed, because tables have a rather static design. On the other hand, with vbulletin 4 and div's, the situation isn't much better, because then all elements tend to flee from the developer

HTML hates me

[blackie58]

Thanks for the replies

Its working as i want thanks

[GarethBurrows]

...found the answer...

[pengrus]

My developer helped us install this mod to work with a custom theme they developed, and we found many of the adlocations do not show the ads. They said this is bug issue with vbulletin or your mod. Is he correct?

ad_thread_last_post_content = not working
ad_thread_first_post_content = not working
ad_showthread_firstpost_start = working
ad_showthread_firstpost_sig = working
ad_showthread_beforeqr = not working
ad_navbar_below = working
ad_header_logo = not working
ad_header_end = not working
ad_global_header2 = working
ad_global_header1 = working
ad_global_below_navbar = working
ad_global_above_footer = working
ad_forum_below_threadlist = working
ad_forumhome_afterforums = not working
ad_forumdisplay_afterthreads = not working
ad_footer_start = working
ad_footer_end = working
ad_board_below_whats_going_on = working
ad_board_after_forums = working
ad_blogsidebar_start = not working
ad_blogsidebar_middle = not working
ad_blogsidebar_end = not working
ad_blogshowentry_before = working
ad_blogshowentry_after = working
ad_bloglist_first_entry = working
ad_archive_below_content = working
ad_archive_above_content2 = working
ad_archive_above_content1 = working

Thank you!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pengrus

My developer helped us install this mod to work with a custom theme they developed, and we found many of the adlocations do not show the ads. They said this is bug issue with vbulletin or your mod. Is he correct?

(...)

Thank you!

Oh, how I love developers, really!

Do some of the ad locations work? What are the setting differences?

Did you actually insert a banner placeholder inside the inbuilt ad locations? Else there will appear nothing.

Are there enough banners in the database to show multiple banners on the same page? If you have 5 locations on page, you also must have at least 5 banners to show.

Until now, we always managed to run the banners on any system and any circumstances, and most of the times it was just a misunderstanding or spelling error, or a wrong time setting. Besides not reading the manual about vbSEO, of course ... even on Photopost (which is an addon), some people have managed to show their banners with the unofficial addon (at post 989 of this thread).

So, please prove me wrong

[pengrus]

We created one simple text ad, and tried it one by one on all the ad locations. And the list above shows which ones working, which ones not working.

The developer even said this:

"Regarding those ad location template that is not working, we tested it on default vb and it doesn't work and it is not related to our theme. You can test it in default vBulletin style to check."

Does this mod require modification to the custom theme to add something to the theme template?

Thanks,
Sean

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pengrus

We created one simple text ad, and tried it one by one on all the ad locations. And the list above shows which ones working, which ones not working.

The developer even said this:

"Regarding those ad location template that is not working, we tested it on default vb and it doesn't work and it is not related to our theme. You can test it in default vBulletin style to check."

Does this mod require modification to the custom theme to add something to the theme template?

Thanks,
Sean

Not if you use the inbuilt ad_* locations. But if you want to fill banners in more specific places, you will have to edit the respective templates.

[SPVB]

I got the first ad (<!--@vbbanners:0@--> ) to show up - how do I add the rest of the banners to the code? I am lost!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by SPVB

I got the first ad (<!--@vbbanners:0@--> ) to show up - how do I add the rest of the banners to the code? I am lost!

You would add more <!--@vbbanners:0@--> into your page until you show all the banners you wish to see in a single page. And, you would add N banners into the database, each of the different banners you would show in rotation.