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

[DemOnstar]

Originally Posted by digeditor

1. create your ads and put them somewhere
2. determine which template you want the ad to appear in
3. start a new ad
4. give it a name
5. pick the position you want to use, 0 through 9 - these correspond to the @0 - @9 things which you put in your template
6. go tot the TEXT box - insert the code for your ad. For a non swf ad mine looks something like:
<A HREF="http://www.digonline.org" TARGET="_blank"><IMG SRC="/ad_folder/images/March_2014_mtg1.png " WIDTH="250" HEIGHT="125" TITLE="Click here" ALT="Click for more info"></A>
7. enter your start and end date - the advice in a lot of posts here is to pick a date before today
8. Go back to the top and enable the ad
9. repeat for all the ads you want to rotate in whatever position you picked

This was helpful. Thanks for making the effort.

I have finally managed to get a placeholder up but by the time the page is fully loaded, the placeholder is then covered by other elements on the site.
I put width and height dimensions in but still lose the placeholder.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by SPEEDKILLZ

I am having a few problems. 1 how do i get my ad over and under the welcome name (see attached img) and also how do i add multiple ads to rotate in the same spot?

This is a known issue with some flash banners which haven't the transparent attribute set. It is necessary to tweak the banner to make it work properly. For a few banners also the flash wrapper may work.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by dariyos

end-date function doesn?t work

i have tested a banner with an end-date.

e.g "month: march" "day: 5" "year:2014" "hour:10" "minute:12"

after this end-date, the banner is still displayed on the forum.

it should be deactivated.

i really need this function, any ideas?

If your database server has a different date or time zone than the web server, there may be timing problems, such as shifting date and time while saving and not getting the desired results. There is nothing we can do about it.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by DemOnstar

I have been trying for days to get this to work. Not seen one banner yet.
I have searched through 116 posts and haven't found a tutorial that I can understand. lol.

I believe it will work one day..

In the included help there is a one shot tutorial to get it work. Also, there is a movie in the very first post. And, eventually, it will help to reinstall the plugin and just try it without first tweaking the settings.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by TheLastSuperman

I wish I could mark as installed more than once but can't and not all forum owners you do work for have time to mark as installed so from me to you y2ksw consider this +1 more install for a total of about 15 installs of this mod alone here in the past few months - many people are thankful for this mod .

Yeah I know. I am myself most grateful for this modification every time

[Impromptu]

Hey there,

Is a way, I can change the image to % rather than pixel. I have a script from a third party for a 3rd banner and is 728 x 90. This size is fine, but it looks out of place depending if you use a laptop or a full size monitor.

Note: it's a script with an image and not image, which would be easier.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http:/xwy.com/s4ANLZJZyLMWqcfzuvZcQGNd7ZgqdRLk&amp;media=13&amp; campaign=1&amp;type=10"></script>

I've tried adding width="30%"

Thanks in advance!

[My Hattiesburg]

Originally Posted by bzcomputers

I've found them to be accurate. You should be able to compare it to pageload statistics.

If you're getting that many impressions your bank account ought to be telling you it's doing well too!

Google analytics shows about 1/10 the number of pageviews compared to impressions, but I don't think google is counting all my pages. But I wouldn't think there would be that big of a disparity.

We're really just now getting started with advertising so I only have a couple up from people who own the site, but if I were to charge real clients what the stats say, I'm afraid they'd question the reliability of the stats, especially if I gave them a google analytics printout. I don't know enough about any of this to make an argument either way about what stats are more accurate.

One of the ads is actually one of mine for another company I have, and I wouldn't pay as much as the impressions say I would owe, so this has us questioning our entire pricing policy.

[bzcomputers]

Originally Posted by My Hattiesburg

Google analytics shows about 1/10 the number of pageviews compared to impressions, but I don't think google is counting all my pages. But I wouldn't think there would be that big of a disparity.

This would concern me also. I've found that if Google Analytics code is setup correctly on a vBulletin site that it is quite accurate.

I would work on this first, then once that is fixed you'll have a good baseline of pageloads to compare to, then you can work on the ad impression disparity.

As for Google Analytics here are a couple things to check on:

• 1) Where is your code being implemented (directly in a template, within a mod)? If you are using a mod I would try going directly within a template (preferably header or footer for best results).
• 2) Are you using the new Universal Analytics code? I've found this to be even more accurate.

[y2ksw]

Google Analytics isn't accurate on sites with more than 1000 page hits per hour. Also, it will miss all devices which have no Javascript enabled.

[My Hattiesburg]

Originally Posted by bzcomputers

This would concern me also. I've found that if Google Analytics code is setup correctly on a vBulletin site that it is quite accurate.

I would work on this first, then once that is fixed you'll have a good baseline of pageloads to compare to, then you can work on the ad impression disparity.

As for Google Analytics here are a couple things to check on:

• 1) Where is your code being implemented (directly in a template, within a mod)? If you are using a mod I would try going directly within a template (preferably header or footer for best results).
• 2) Are you using the new Universal Analytics code? I've found this to be even more accurate.

I inserted the google code directly into the head include template. After looking, though, I just discovered that I had not included it in another skin that I'm working on, but that skin is not used much right now.

As for all the pages not being indexed, a few months back we were getting slammed by spam bots and I'm not sure what else. Our server loads were running real high at times and at some points got so high that it shut the site down. I was looking here at vb.org for any kind of answer as well as getting our tech guy to pore over the server looking for anything that we could do to fix it. I added a couple of mods to block the spam bots and also modified my robots.txt file as someone here had recommended. After looking at the robots.txt file it's not blocking as many pages as I thought it might be so the analytics stats wasn't missing that much.

At this point I really don't know what to think. I do think that it's highly unlikely that 2 ads together are getting 1 million impressions a month on our site. Because of this we decided to offer ads on a monthly rate instead of by impressions. We were going to offer them at $1.50/thousand then changed it to $1.00 but at that rate my ad would cost me $500/month with the number of impressions it's gotten. There's no way I can justify that.