Major Additions - [DBTech] DragonByte Forum Ads v2 (vB4)

What is DragonByte Forum Ads?
DragonByte Forum Ads is an advanced advertising solution that allows you to easily show visitors you have advertisements available, offer multiple ad campaign options including banners, keywords and more and maximise the revenue potential of your community. Full PayPal integration and automated features such as deactivating expired ad campaigns allows you to make money without expending extra effort.

Fully integrated with vBulletin's "Advertising" page, this mod allows you to make use of vBulletin's powerful advertisement criteria, without having to manually accept payments & manually add the ad code.

DragonByte Forum Ads allows you to offer your ad space on the forums at a price, letting potential advertisers submit their advertisements for consideration before they are asked to pay.

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If you like this mod please hit the button to the right ---->

Please remember to click the, button to the right if you installed the mod ---->

What does 'Marking As Installed' do ?

* It helps you to stay on top of updates - members who have installed modifications will be notified by us whenever new updates are available.

* For security issues - vbulletin.org will contact all members who have installed a modification whenever a security issue is brought to their attention.

* Marking a modification as installed also helps us know how many people are using our work, giving us extra incentive to provide more features and new modifications.

We appreciate the support!
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Other addons available @ www.DragonByte-Tech.com/forum


Major Features

Automatic Campaign Handling
When an advertisement campaign is paid for, it's automatically activated. Once its purchased impressions, clicks or days are used up, it's automatically deactivated.

PayPal integration
Supports PayPal for fast and easy transactions, even from credit card users (without the responsibility of storing & processing credit card data).

Powerful Admin Controls
Administrators have complete control over advertisement campaigns, requiring moderation for all campaigns before they are paid for to ensure you agree with all the content being displayed.

Over A Dozen Banner Locations
Archive - Above Content 1, Above Content 2, Below Content
Forum Home - After Forums, Below "What's Going On"
Forum Display - Below Threadlist
Thread Display - First Post Content, Last Post Content
Global - Header 1, Header 2, Below Navbar, Above Footer
Blog Sidebar - Sidebar 1, Sidebar 2, Sidebar 3
Blog Entry - Before Entry, After Entry
Blog List - First Entry

Powerful Keyword System
You can sell keyword replacements, allowing people to convert certain words into links to their sites. This can be especially useful if you're running a site discussing real products, allowing the product owners to quickly convert discussions into potential sales.


Complete Feature List

Lite

Payment Processors

• Supports PayPal
• Configure the description to display to your users when they checkout
• Configure your Merchant ID (such as PayPal email address)
• "Sandbox" Mode toggleable via vBulletin Options, for testing purposes

Banner Spaces

• Integrate with one of vBulletin's built-in advertising locations
• Configure the dimensions of the banner shown within this space
• Choose how many rotations are available for this banner space
• Set multiple banner spaces to the same advertising location to show the banners side-by-side
• Configurable placeholder image
• Placeholders and sold ads have anti-adblock code

Prices

• Choose price type (keyword or banner space)
• Choose the price per X impressions, clicks or days
• Configure multiple price points for the same banner space or for keywords to encourage bigger purchases
• Choose what banner space the price point belongs to
• Configurable display order for display in the front-end shop

Sold Keywords

• Add new keyword advertisement manually - give advertisement space as a gift!
• Search sold keywords by active/expired, username, sold date (range), or specific keyword
• Search results display a paginated list of keywords
• Edit / Update / delete the keywords
• Quickly view the transaction for the keyword, if any
• Support for date-expiring ads even if they are also Clicks/Impressions limited

Sold Banners

• Add new banner advertisement manually - give advertisement space as a gift!
• Search sold banners by active/expired, username or sold date (range)
• Search results display a paginated list of banners
• Edit / Update / delete the banners
• Quickly view the transaction for the banner, if any
• Support for date-expiring ads even if they are also Clicks/Impressions limited

Transactions

• Search transactions by All, Valid (completed or reversed) Completed, Reversed, Pending or Refunded status, user name, amount spent, date range, ip address
• Search results display a paginated list of transactions
• View transaction info including a complete list of information received from the payment processor
• Quickly view all transactions for the selected user

Maintenance

• Repair integration with vBulletin advertisements
• Rebuild keyword database for statistical purposes

Packages

• Group multiple banner space / keyword configurations together in a handy package
• Set a new price for the combined Package
• Allows user to configure each package item individually
• Visually attractive front-end display while buying

Custom Amounts

• Ability to set a base price for 1 Click or 1 Impression
• Allows users to choose how many Clicks or Impressions they wish to purchase
• User configures and purchases like normal
• Offers great flexibility in buying advertising

Purchase / Configure Pages

• The Purchase page has been revamped, with a new tabbed interface!
• Under the Banner Spaces tab there's now a visual indicator for where each banner will be shown
• Clicking an ad space on the visual indicator shows only pricing options for that banner space
• Sold out banner spaces display "SOLD OUT" in red
• Each pricing option for the same banner space is grouped under the same header

Statistics

• Clicks & Impressions has a dedicated Statistics page per-banner / per-keyword
• Summary of clicks or impressions stats above the Search form in the Customer area
• Displays total clicks or impressions, unique IP addresses, date of first click or impression, date of last click or impression
• Ability to click a button to receive an email report of the statistics
• Displays the country of origin for users who clicked / viewed each content type
• Fully browsable with pagination

StyleVars

• "Checkmark" image in the Packages / Discounts display
• Border around the ads & placeholders
• Padding around the ads & placeholders
• Background of the ads & placeholders
• "Please Don't Use An Ad-blocker" image
• "Your Ad Here" placeholder image

User / Usergroup Options

• Usergroup permission: automatically approve keywords
• Usergroup permission: automatically approve banners
• Usergroup permission: automatically approve bids
• User flag: automatically approve keywords
• User flag: automatically approve banners
• User flag: automatically approve bids

Pro

Multiple Currencies

• Show prices in multiple currencies
• Set a tax rate for purchases in currencies other than your home currency
• Configurable exchange rate
• Choose a "Primary Currency" that your prices will be based on

Price Bidding

• Ability to make a price point up for bidding
• Allows users to enter a bid and submit it for acceptance
• Admin can accept or reject the bid from a link in an email
• User receives email when their bid has been accepted or rejected
• Rest of purchase process proceeds as normal

Discounts

• Group multiple package / banner space / keyword configurations together and provide a discount
• Discount can be flat rate or % of the total price
• Allows user to configure each package item individually
• Visually attractive front-end display while buying

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This mod displays a copyright notification in the footer of all pages, which includes:

• 1 Link to DragonByte Technologies homepage
• 1 Link to Product Description page of this modification

[DragonByte Tech]

Could you please stop posting the same query in 4 different posts/threads? If you post a query over @ our site, we're not going to respond to it here

Thanks!


Fillip

[Nelson58]

But you DIDN'T answer this question on your site! I waited for DAYS. Nor did you answer on here.

So I really don't know where you get off posting that, especially since I have bought about 8 of your paid mods Your customer service leaves a lot to be desired which is WHY I asked here in case someone else could help because you don't.

This mod leaves white space around ads on my site and is awful to use!! It conflicts with other mods. And isn't it about time you made manuals for your mods if you don't want to answer a lot of questions???

Finally, you have no right to TELL me not to ask questions here. You can ignore them, as you did for days on your site and here, but this isn't your site to be bossing people around on.

I have customers for banner ads, and your failure to provide support is costing us money.

I will switch to RBS. I encourage others to do likewise. You can see how Filip is to deal with when you have problems.

Nelson

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by Nelson58

But you DIDN'T answer this question on your site! I waited for DAYS. Nor did you answer on here.

You posted your query @ our site on the 1st of December at 04:02 AM UK time. You posted a duplicate thread on the 2nd of December at 1:45 PM UK time.

You received a response to your duplicate thread explaining why your query went unanswered on the 2nd of December at 2:15 PM UK time.

You received a detailed response that answered one of your points, requested more information regarding another, and resolved your third question on the 2nd of December at 5:08 PM.

I'm a bit confused as to how this translates into you having waited for days?

Originally Posted by Nelson58

This mod leaves white space around ads on my site and is awful to use!!

This issue has been resolved as per my reply on the 2nd of December at 5:08 PM

Originally Posted by Nelson58

It conflicts with other mods.

At the time of writing this, I have yet to receive a response from you regarding the nature of the conflict.

Originally Posted by Nelson58

And isn't it about time you made manuals for your mods if you don't want to answer a lot of questions???

I do agree that we could do a better job regarding manuals.

Originally Posted by Nelson58

Finally, you have no right to TELL me not to ask questions here. You can ignore them, as you did for days on your site and here, but this isn't your site to be bossing people around on.

I guess it's a good thing I didn't tell you to do anything then, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Nelson58

I have customers for banner ads, and your failure to provide support is costing us money.

I do apologise for the delay, but as per my response on the 2nd of December at 2:15 PM UK time, Mondays are not good days to expect fast support unfortunately

I am extremely busy during Mondays, due to the fact that I have a lot of preparations to do for releases that night. I endeavour to get to any unanswered support queries as soon as I can on the day afterwards, i.e. Tuesday, which is exactly what happened in your case

Originally Posted by Nelson58

I will switch to RBS. I encourage others to do likewise. You can see how Filip is to deal with when you have problems.

I wish you the best of luck with whatever alternative products you choose to use


Fillip

[Nelson58]

NONE of the issues have been resolved.

This mod apparently does NOT permit integration with ADSENSE. To use this mod, you have to give up all the income you make on ADSENSE. RBS integrates with ADSENSE.

Next, your proposed solution to the WHITE SPACE is not a solution, since the files you told me to make changes to do not have the elements you told me to change. :-))))

Next, the mod that permits moderators and super moderators to approve registrations does not work with THIS mod, because it does not provide notifications of pending registrations the way it does when it is working. This renders the approval mod worthless when your mod is enabled.

Originally Posted by Belazor

This is currently working as intended, see this thread for more details & information: http://www.dragonbyte-tech.com/f220/...adsense-13664/

In other words, your mod does NOT support ADSENSE. To use it, we have to give up the revenues we receive from ADSENSE.

Originally Posted by Belazor

Can you please specify the nature of the conflict? "It doesn't work" doesn't really tell me anything I need to know in order to fix it

Please provide the full description of the problem, as well as step-by-step instructions for how to replicate the problem. Without this information, I am unable to assist you.

There are NO notifications of pending registrations when someone enables your FORUMADS mod. Thus, this mod: Moderate New User Registrations (ModCP Option) - vBulletin.org Forum does NOT show pending registrations to moderators and supermoderators when YOUR mod is enabled. That makes the mod useless.

Originally Posted by Belazor

Make the following changes to the dbtech_forumads_global.css CSS Template:
1. .dbtech-wrapper-block - remove border: 1px solid #000000;
2. .dbtech-wrapper-block.dbtech-wrapper-block-noblockbg - remove #FFFFFF

That file contains none of those elements:

dbtech_forumads_global.css contains the following:

@charset "UTF-8";

.dbtech-wrapper-block {
display:inline-block;
margin:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_block_margin};
border:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_block_border};
}

.dbtech-wrapper-block img {
border:0;
}

.dbtech-wrapper-block.dbtech-wrapper-block-noblockbg {
background:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_noadblock_bg};
}

.dbtech-wrapper-block.dbtech-wrapper-block-phbg {
background:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_placeholder_bg};
}

Thus, I cannot remove what you specified. Your solution does not work. The white boxes remain, annoying as ever!


Solutions for issues such as the "white box" issue should be documented somewhere. When I get solutions, I post them on here for others to use so that they don't have the same issues I had (in other words, I share with others).

I would rather have nothing then play trial and error on my site with mods and have to debug them myself and basically act as your beta tester for the mods I buy. My users are annoyed that things are not working properly, as well they should be!

Please don't sell any more mods without written documentation and/or a manual!

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by Nelson

In other words, your mod does NOT support ADSENSE. To use it, we have to give up the revenues we receive from ADSENSE.

You can still use AdSense banners alongside the banners from this mod. The ability to have AdSense banners rotate alongside sold banners in the same banner space is a feature we intend to implement in the next version, which should be coming within a week or two.

Originally Posted by Nelson

There are NO notifications of pending registrations when someone enables your FORUMADS mod. Thus, this mod: Moderate New User Registrations (ModCP Option) - vBulletin.org Forum does NOT show pending registrations to moderators and supermoderators when YOUR mod is enabled. That makes the mod useless.

I will look into this and post back when I have more information for you or if I need access to your site in order to resolve this issue (e.g. if I can't replicate it locally)

Originally Posted by Nelson

That file contains none of those elements:

dbtech_forumads_global.css contains the following:

@charset "UTF-8";

.dbtech-wrapper-block {
display:inline-block;
margin:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_block_margin};
border:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_block_border};
}

.dbtech-wrapper-block img {
border:0;
}

.dbtech-wrapper-block.dbtech-wrapper-block-noblockbg {
background:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_noadblock_bg};
}

.dbtech-wrapper-block.dbtech-wrapper-block-phbg {
background:{vb:stylevar dbtech_forumads_placeholder_bg};
}

Thus, I cannot remove what you specified. Your solution does not work.

Edit the StyleVar dbtech_forumads_block_border and remove the contents of it.

Edit the StyleVar dbtech_forumads_noadblock_bg and remove the contents of the Color setting.


Fillip

[Nelson58]

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

Edit the StyleVar dbtech_forumads_block_border and remove the contents of it.

Edit the StyleVar dbtech_forumads_noadblock_bg and remove the contents of the Color setting.


Fillip

That doesn't work! The white box is STILL there!



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Nevermind. Found the solution myself. Have a nice day.....

[DragonByte Tech]

DragonByte Forum Ads v2.0.0 Gold

Changes To Existing Features:

• The main advertisement page is now accessible to guests

Bug Fixes:

• "Customer Area" should now be displayed in the navigation area on vBulletin 4.1.x and lower

Fillip

[Nelson58]

Originally Posted by Nelson58

That doesn't work! The white box is STILL there!



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Nevermind. Found the solution myself. Have a nice day.....

Our forum of 10,000 members has discontinued use of this product due to the difficulty of use, the conflicts with other mods, the lack of a manual, and the lack of timely and friendly support.

BTW- Our customers do not want to place the ads themselves- they want us to do it. I fail to understand why the coders of these products continue to add features that are not desired by commercial advertisers, yet fail to fix issues that plague their products. It is almost like they are out of touch with their customers. And when you suggest features that are desired by your customers, they give you a boilerplate response "we will keep it in mind". My dealings in this thread should serve as an example to those considering this product. There are issues for which there are no documented solutions (no manual), and when you ask a question, you can almost sense the sneering and flippant way you are responded to. This is not the way to provide customer service or to endear website owners to you. We paid for lifetime upgrade and support of their products, about 5 or more of them, and feel we are entitled to better. I am sure this will bring some response, but, as I am busy myself with my forum, this will be my last word on this. Despite our purchases, we are slowly phasing out the use of their products.

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by Nelson58

Our forum of 10,000 members has discontinued use of this product due to the difficulty of use, the conflicts with other mods, the lack of a manual, and the lack of timely and friendly support.

Hi there,

Your first post was on a Monday, which is our busiest day of the week, that’s why it took us 30 hours or so to respond to you. I apologize for that delay; we typically aim to respond to support queries within a day at of them being posted at the absolute latest. After that initial delay we responded to your additional post on our site within an hour, which is closer to our average response time.

When the support is delayed, we explain why, and also let customers know what helps us respond quicker, e.g not posting the same question multiple times in multiple places. Again, my apologies if you found us asking you not to do that unfriendly.

Originally Posted by Nelson58

And when you suggest features that are desired by your customers, they give you a boilerplate response "we will keep it in mind".

All feature requests are added to our tracking system on DBTech. Where a feature is possible, we give the response that it will be considered when we are next updating the product. If it’s not possible, we say as much. There isn’t really any other response we can give. We can’t promise a feature will be included until the next version is being planned.

We ask people to post feature requests in our support forums, rather than here @ vBulletin.org, because we have a highly complex tracking system that remembers every single feature request posted since the beginning of DBTech.

Every time we update a product we go through the entire list of features marked as under consideration. We then decide which requests to add during this update based on a variety of factors, such as how long they would take to implement, how many people have requested/liked a feature and whether or not the feature would benefit all forums or only those in a specific niche.

Originally Posted by Nelson58

Our customers do not want to place the ads themselves- they want us to do it. I fail to understand why the coders of these products continue to add features that are not desired by commercial advertisers, yet fail to fix issues that plague their products. It is almost like they are out of touch with their customers.

Almost all of the new features we add in updates are requests from customers. We do our best to accommodate feature requests, even if it’s a feature that not every single one of the users will find a use for.

Originally Posted by Nelson58

and when you ask a question, you can almost sense the sneering and flippant way you are responded to. This is not the way to provide customer service or to endear website owners to you.

It’s difficult to convey tone via text, but I can assure you that wasn’t our intention. We try to convey information as clearly and concisely as possible.

Originally Posted by Nelson58

We paid for lifetime upgrade and support of their products, about 5 or more of them, and feel we are entitled to better.

We always strive to do better, and the delay in providing an initial response to your issue was well outside of our average support wait time.
Regarding manuals for our products, that is an area we are looking to improve upon. We have conducted surveys of our customers several times in the past where we have compared the time it would take to create a manual with the number of features we could add instead. Every single survey has come back with a huge majority saying they would prefer more features over documentation. While in an ideal would we could provide both, time is a finite resource and we use our time in the way the majority of our customer’s request. Unfortunately you can’t please everyone.

Other than that it appears your complaint appears to be that you interpreted our responses as being rude or unfriendly, and thought your feature request was being ignored. That wasn’t the case. I would kindly suggest reading the responses again and assuming they were intended to be friendly; you may find your assumption about the tone they were conveying changes as a result.

I hope my response has at least clarified some things for you, and I again apologize unreservedly for the delay in our response to your first issue.

Kind Regards

Iain Kidd
Managing Director

[Nelson58]

Well said! (applauding)....

There is a fellow here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...274972&page=27
who has waited since November 8, 2014 to get some help on NavTabs, another one of your products.

In the time it took you to write that missive, maybe one of you guys could have helped him?