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

[DakoomNetwork]

y2ksw, could it works also as a Google Adsense, so recreating the same functions?

[vikris]

One of the greatest addons!!! I have several questions though:

1. Will it be in the future more than 10 positions?

2. Some of the ads are displaying also in the forums (specifically header and footer) how to remove that? I like the ads to be displayed only on CMS page.

3. Maybe this question is out of the thread, but I have to ask: Is there a way to setup a widget on the main CMS to show friendly sites with small graphic and link to them?

Thanks a lot again!

Regards,

vikris

[Scooterpig]

We want to put our banners to in the Header to the right of the logo but can't work it out. Can anyone please tell me what template or where I put the code as per the attached pic for it to show up underneath the Welcome and above the Search?

Thank you..

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by DakoomNetwork

y2ksw, could it works also as a Google Adsense, so recreating the same functions?

The plugin is not a replacement for Google Adsense or any other system. However you may use it to show Google Adsense scripts and will give you a little extra feedback, such as the number of impressions.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by vikris

One of the greatest addons!!! I have several questions though:

1. Will it be in the future more than 10 positions?

2. Some of the ads are displaying also in the forums (specifically header and footer) how to remove that? I like the ads to be displayed only on CMS page.

3. Maybe this question is out of the thread, but I have to ask: Is there a way to setup a widget on the main CMS to show friendly sites with small graphic and link to them?

Thanks a lot again!

Regards,

vikris

1. As said before, 10 positions are much more than you ever would need on any kind of site. If you see a position as a fixed place somewhere in your styles, it is a partly wrong assumption. Positions are rather banner types, like square, wide or skyscraper. Together with other settings, you get almost unlimited filters where and how to show banners, all with one of the same "position", or at most, one or two additional ones.
2. You will have to use conditionals in your styles. I don't know yet how this works on 4.x, but I'm sure somebody knows (I'm not a designer). Most probably it hasn't changed much and a comparison to THIS_SCRIPT suffices (some sort of if condition="THIS_SCRIPT='content'" tag).
3. I believe so. But since I'm not a designer, I can't tell

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Scooterpig

We want to put our banners to in the Header to the right of the logo but can't work it out. Can anyone please tell me what template or where I put the code as per the attached pic for it to show up underneath the Welcome and above the Search?

Thank you..

I believe those are: ad_global_header1 and ad_global_header2 ...

[Scooterpig]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I believe those are: ad_global_header1 and ad_global_header2 ...

Thanks but nope that don't work sorry...

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Scooterpig

Thanks but nope that don't work sorry...

Well' I pass the hot potatoe to the designers. I'm anyway only a coder and design/style problems are not my strength.

[vikris]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

1. As said before, 10 positions are much more than you ever would need on any kind of site. If you see a position as a fixed place somewhere in your styles, it is a partly wrong assumption. Positions are rather banner types, like square, wide or skyscraper. Together with other settings, you get almost unlimited filters where and how to show banners, all with one of the same "position", or at most, one or two additional ones.
2. You will have to use conditionals in your styles. I don't know yet how this works on 4.x, but I'm sure somebody knows (I'm not a designer). Most probably it hasn't changed much and a comparison to THIS_SCRIPT suffices (some sort of if condition="THIS_SCRIPT='content'" tag).
3. I believe so. But since I'm not a designer, I can't tell

Thanks a lot for this clarification!

Regards,

Vikris

[heatherw610]

Hello, when I have 2-3 banners in, every so often it will show nothing. Its like it goes through them all and then will "run out" so that space on my forum is like there was nothing ever there. Anyone know how to fix this?