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

[fridaypassion]

Hi

I have a forum that uses a new style not the default vb style so this mod doesnt show up automatically.

If I have a banner set to say position 1 what is the tag I have to add in the template to get the banner to show?

Which template is the normal position one vertical position in? This is the position I want to add to my style

Thanks

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by fridaypassion

If I have a banner set to say position 1 what is the tag I have to add in the template to get the banner to show?

<!--@vbbanners:1@-->

Originally Posted by fridaypassion

Which template is the normal position one vertical position in?

Any "ad postion" in this add-on can be vertical or horizontal, depending entirely on how you want to define it. You then put the placeholder (see above) in whatever template you wish.

If you use the built in vBulletin advertising templates, the only one with a built in vertical is the Blog Sidebar template. However, you can use any of the sidebar templates if you have those enabled and just add the banner placeholder in that spot.

[alan92rttt]

Is there any reporting for click/views per month to the person paying for the ad?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by alan92rttt

Is there any reporting for click/views per month to the person paying for the ad?

You may enable click tracking (works for images only). In the header and in the listings you see also the number of views.

You may also limit the number of clicks (Max. Clicks) or impressions (Max. Impressions) beforehand, such that the banner disappears when it has reached the prepaid amount of clicks and/or views.

[pitzerwm]

I'm using this on my HTML pages, see a previous post. In FireFox the banners are not showing up. this is new, so IMO its one of the patches. Gio, you have any ideas?

You can see this by using FireFox and this URL: http://www.autocareforum.com/buyersguide.html

The banners that you might see are Flash and they work fine. Its the Gif & Jpg that do not.

This is the code to display it.

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);
define('SKIP_SESSIONCREATE', 1);
define('NOCOOKIES', 1);
define('THIS_SCRIPT', 'rbs_blank');
$phrasegroups = array();
$specialtemplates = array();
$globaltemplates = array();
$actiontemplates = array();
require_once('./global.php');
$html = '<html>
<head>
 <title>Rotating Banner System</title>
</head>
<style type=\"text/css\">

<!--
body {
            margin-left: 0px;
            margin-top: 0px;
            margin-right: 0px;
            margin-bottom: 0px;
}
-->
</style>

<body>
<!--@vbbanners:2@-->
</body>
</html>';
eval('print_output("' . $html . '");');
?>

Thanks,

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pitzerwm

I'm using this on my HTML pages, see a previous post. In FireFox the banners are not showing up. this is new, so IMO its one of the patches. Gio, you have any ideas?

You can see this by using FireFox and this URL: http://www.autocareforum.com/buyersguide.html

The banners that you might see are Flash and they work fine. Its the Gif & Jpg that do not.


Thanks,

Well I tried hard to get an image banner on the home page, but probably you have them disabled ... on the forum I got one though (footer) and it works to me.

If an image banner doesn't show, maybe you have exceptions for (not loading) images on your own site (?). This is the only one I could think of ... or a buggy plugin, such for example a local image cache, or so.

[onesexforum]

this mod is brilliant just what i was looking for. If you are doing affiliate ads and don't have to worry about monetizing it yourself then this is for you. It is a simple banner ad rotation mod. You may have to fiddle around in the templates a bit to get the ads where you want them, but you will figure it out after a while. It's not too hard

thanks and Keep up the good work !

[pitzerwm]

Gio,

It is a FireFox issue, IE and Chrome are ok. The forum is fine as it uses your normal code. I have java, and reader etc I don't have but a couple of add-ons.

I'll keep messing around. I noticed that I didn't have any images on the Ebay site, so something is turned off, but don't know whay.

[fridaypassion]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

<!--@vbbanners:1@-->



Any "ad postion" in this add-on can be vertical or horizontal, depending entirely on how you want to define it. You then put the placeholder (see above) in whatever template you wish.

If you use the built in vBulletin advertising templates, the only one with a built in vertical is the Blog Sidebar template. However, you can use any of the sidebar templates if you have those enabled and just add the banner placeholder in that spot.

Thanks for this reply

Do you know which template this position is (the top ad in this site) this is the location I want to use in my site but I cant find it!

http://www.meganesport.net/community/

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by fridaypassion

Thanks for this reply

Do you know which template this position is (the top ad in this site) this is the location I want to use in my site but I cant find it!

http://www.meganesport.net/community/

Admin CP > Advertising > Add New Ad > Ad Selector > Global: Below Navbar

or

Styles & templates > Style manager > Ad Location Templates > ad_global_below_navbar