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

[pitzerwm]

Y2, as usual you openned a can of worms with the new update

Do you think that if I update, that it will create any issues with my HTML pages?

Y2, remember you created this code for me and I have it running on a number of "non-forum" sites.


<?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:0@-->
</body>
</html>';
eval('print_output("' . $html . '");');
?>
Calling it with:


<iframe src="http://98.131.36.111/rbs_html.php" width="600" height="80" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" ></iframe>

[MmS1]

i know why it didn't work
it's work only with visitor and member not admins
if i put a images banner not working but if put text it work but only visitor and member will see that not me

[megroup]

Hello,

Unfortunately, In the new version still several bugs that required to be fixed:

I have VB 3.8.2 and here is what happens.

1. When you save banner settings. Expire date and time jumps forward 20 hours or so. That means you cannot set accurate banner expire date and time.

2. When all required settings for flash banner are enabled, embedded link that included within swf banner code does not work. meaning visitors cannot get to advertisers websites by clicking on banner.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by hohleweg

Hi
Can i set ALL impressions to 0?
Greetings Jo

You mean you want to reset the impressions on all existing banners?

Query:

UPDATE rbs_banners SET impressions=0

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by megroup

Hello,

Unfortunately, In the new version still several bugs that required to be fixed:

I have VB 3.8.2 and here is what happens.

1. When you save banner settings. Expire date and time jumps forward 20 hours or so. That means you cannot set accurate banner expire date and time.

2. When all required settings for flash banner are enabled, embedded link that included within swf banner code does not work. meaning visitors cannot get to advertisers websites by clicking on banner.

1. I can't and I won't fix problems with board and/or server settings. If your time jumps, your DST setting or your server date/time settings, or both, are not setup properly. I can remember I have had similar problems in the past until I worked out how to correctly setup the board date/time features and DST, and of course, syncronized the server time with NTP to a reliable time server (e.g. pool.ntp.org). A lot of servers on the web aren't syncronized and run out of any plausible time space over their life time, but you can require from your hosting provider to keep the time within a certain range.
2. The Flash wrapper works as designed. It was designed to override internal flash links in order to allow click tracking and overriding erroneous, missing or tampered embedded links. Thus, you will have to specify also a landing page (URL), else it will not go anywhere. If you want to use your banner as-is, you don't need the wrapper. In this case, paste the banner code into the Text field and leave all other fields empty (unmodified). As easy as that. However click tracking would not work, unless the embedded link calls the script rbs_banner.php?id=N, where N is the ID of the banner you wish to track. In this case, you will have to setup a landing page, too.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by MmS1

i know why it didn't work
it's work only with visitor and member not admins
if i put a images banner not working but if put text it work but only visitor and member will see that not me

That seems to be impossible ... have you specified user groups in the Usergroups field? If yes, delete them all. The visitor user group has the ID 1.

I attach here a typical banner setting.

If you are still testing, I suggest to reinstall the product in order to get the default settings back, and be sure the predefinded banners work as designed. I'm really unhappy with a situation I can't see and have to guess what's wrong.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by pitzerwm

Y2, as usual you openned a can of worms with the new update

Do you think that if I update, that it will create any issues with my HTML pages?

Y2, remember you created this code for me and I have it running on a number of "non-forum" sites.


<?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:0@-->
</body>
</html>';
eval('print_output("' . $html . '");');
?>
Calling it with:


<iframe src="http://98.131.36.111/rbs_html.php" width="600" height="80" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" ></iframe>

This code should continue to work flawlessly. Essentially, the changes are to support banner statistics and record additional information on a banner click.

[kellogs]

I have installed it and it works very well except on flash banner.

The flash banner flicker

Any idea?

[pitzerwm]

Thanks, This mod, enables me to make a lot of money with my website. Todate, all issues were my screwups.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by kellogs

I have installed it and it works very well except on flash banner.

The flash banner flicker

Any idea?

Could you please send me (PM) the link to your flash banner? Thanks.