Major Additions - vB.Sponsors - Forum and Category Sponsorship Ads (and AdSense) with Statistics

vB.Sponsors
Forum and Category Sponsorship Ads with Statistics

Add sponsor's ads or Google AdSense to forums & categories

INTRO:
This extension will allow you to add sponsors to you forums and categories or use Google AdSense. You can also track the hits to each sponsor by date as well. See below for more features.

For vBulletin 3.7.x, please see https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1557085.

For vBulletin 3.6.x, please see https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1116730

For vBulletin 3.5.x, please see https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=103327

FEATURES:
-Enable sponsorship on forums and categories
-Ability to use Google AdSense code
-Use a banner or a text link
-Supports large banners for the top of the sponsored forum and small banners for the forum listing
-Tracks hits for each sponsor
-Statistics viewable inside Admin CP
-Ability to alter the "Forum sponsored by:" text
-Easy to use and install

INSTALLATION:
Documentation is located here.

THANKS:
...to vBulletin.org and its members.
...to the people who have installed this mod, suggested improvements and found bugs.

FEEDBACK:
Feedback is always welcomed! Good or bad. Post all feedback and feature requests in this thread or in the forums above. Trust me, I'll be reading it even if I don't respond to every post. You can also reach me at DigitalDeviation.com or on Twitter @JustinDoles.

SUPPORT:
Please post as much detail as possible with any code or screenshots pertaining to the issue. MySQL, PHP and web server software versions are helpful. You can obtain these from the Admin CP in vBulletin.

DONATE:
If you like this product, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee.


VERSION HISTORY:
2.0.7 - Bugfix / Feature Add
-Added support for vBulletin 3.8.x.
-Added vbulletin-style.xml file to easily import template modifications for vBulletin 3.8.x.
-Previous versions must manually edit the templates.
-Added a verification for the forum path in link.php.

---KNOWN BUGS---
-Invalid Redirect
--You will need to add each sponsor URL (FULL URL) to the "Redirect Domain Whitelist" in the vBulletin Options -> Site Name / URL / Contact Details section. See screenshot below.

Don't forget to click the install link below if you use it.

[duketxboy]

TY deviation

[duketxboy]

any update?

[Deviation]

Invalid Redirect Issue
You will need to add each sponsor URL (FULL URL) to the "Redirect Domain Whitelist" in the vBulletin Options -> Site Name / URL / Contact Details section. See screenshot below.


I'll work on automating this in the next release, but this should at least get you guys up & going again.

[duketxboy]

Do we just set them up in order or how does this work?

[Deviation]

Originally Posted by duketxboy

Do we just set them up in order or how does this work?

Doesn't matter the order. vBulletin checks that value anytime a redirect is requested that isn't local (on your site).

[mouth]

I love to see this mod support SWF files, or even better the ability to use iFrames. Any chance?

[bada_bing]

Hey Deviation

Just wanted to see if you still have plans to revamp this for the vb 4.x series. This is such an awesome mod I use it on my 3.8 version but would love to my 4.x site

[karabaja3]

Originally Posted by Deviation

Invalid Redirect Issue
You will need to add each sponsor URL (FULL URL) to the "Redirect Domain Whitelist" in the vBulletin Options -> Site Name / URL / Contact Details section. See screenshot below.


I'll work on automating this in the next release, but this should at least get you guys up & going again.

Hi there! I have the same issue in v3.8.7. but I do not have "Redirect Domain Whitelist" form inside AdminCP. What should I do?

[GrantHorizons]

I don't have that option either. Instead, I did the following:

I created a subdir called "redirects" and created redirect pages in there for each forum.

e.g.

Forum 1 advertisers url in the vBSponsors form field is to: /redirects/forum1.htm and THAT file has a redirect in the meta tag like so:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.AdvertisersURL.com/">

The whole forum1.htm file looks like this if you're not sure what you're doing:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.AdvertisersURL.com/">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
<title>redirect</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

That works fine - the negative is that the user sees an error message for a few seconds, then it redirects ok to the advertisers site and hopefully they forget about the error message, because it worked

Make a file for every forum. Just hope you don't have 80 forums like me!

[karabaja3]

Originally Posted by GrantHorizons

I don't have that option either. Instead, I did the following:

I created a subdir called "redirects" and created redirect pages in there for each forum.

e.g.

Forum 1 advertisers url in the vBSponsors form field is to: /redirects/forum1.htm and THAT file has a redirect in the meta tag like so:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.AdvertisersURL.com/">

The whole forum1.htm file looks like this if you're not sure what you're doing:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.AdvertisersURL.com/">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
<title>redirect</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

That works fine - the negative is that the user sees an error message for a few seconds, then it redirects ok to the advertisers site and hopefully they forget about the error message, because it worked

Make a file for every forum. Just hope you don't have 80 forums like me!

Thank you so much for the advice.

I would only add that it might be better to use php for redirection:

PHP Code:

<?php

   header( 'Location: http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/' ) ;

?>