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

[alaska_av8r]

Y2 I am interested in getting the banners to refresh every x amount of seconds and have looked at your post https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=989

I use vbSEO on my website.

I have two test banners at position 0 that are located in a subdirectory /banner_ads

I used adminCP > advertising > manage ads > rbs0 below navbar and have it to show below the navbar with the following code <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>

The banners show up fine and will change when I click different pages.

I attempted to use your rbs_iframe.php and uploaded it to the root directory where the other rbs files are. I am not sure where to put the html code

<iframe src="rbs_iframe.php" align="center" frameborder="0" height="60" width="468" scrolling="no"></iframe>

to make it work.

I tried putting that code in place of <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>
for the rbs0 below navbar in manage ads but couldn't get the ads to swap.

I could see the page refreshing as it should but it only displayed one ad instead of swapping, it also showed this right below the ad, SEO by vbSEO 3.6.0

Where should I put the html code? Will it work putting it into the ad management system or does it have to be placed in the template itself? Also should I edit the php file since I am using vbSEO to read <div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:0@--></div>

thanks
tim

[Maxi62]

BUG: Too many visits are counted!

The RBS system has more than twice as many visits as the AD Manager. Are there in version 2.3.1 include a bug in the visits?
I do not like to update completely on the line that puts the BUG?

[imported_stefan]

Great Mod. Thanks for sharing it. Just send some money :-).

[wilfra]

From the install instructions:

upload all files and folders you find in the upload folder to your forum home

If I do that the vB folders 'admincp' and 'includes' will be overwritten. What am I not understanding?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by wilfra

From the install instructions:




If I do that the vB folders 'admincp' and 'includes' will be overwritten. What am I not understanding?

You are using Windows Explorer and this is what it says. You should use an FTP client instead, namely FileZilla or similar.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Maxi62

BUG: Too many visits are counted!

The RBS system has more than twice as many visits as the AD Manager. Are there in version 2.3.1 include a bug in the visits?
I do not like to update completely on the line that puts the BUG?

We have discussed this lately. It isn't a bug. Your AD manager is what? Google Analytics?

RBS counts impressions and this is, really all impressions. Even from bots and spiders and half loaded pages and mobile devices and scripts.

If you have plugins which load the pages again at each visit, this will make 2x impressions, while probably your AD manager is aware of, vBulletin isn't.

Let me explain: If you have a script which underlines certain words in order to link them to keywords, the script may load a second copy of the same page. And that counts, too. I know of some scripts they do exactly that.

[wilfra]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

You are using Windows Explorer and this is what it says. You should use an FTP client instead, namely FileZilla or similar.

I am using an FTP client - Cyberduck.

I actually never tried to place the files/folders into the root directory because I just assumed it would ask me to overwrite the existing folders that have the same name. Are you saying it wont prompt me to do that?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by wilfra

I am using an FTP client - Cyberduck.

I actually never tried to place the files/folders into the root directory because I just assumed it would ask me to overwrite the existing folders that have the same name. Are you saying it wont prompt me to do that?

I suggest to try to upload the files into a new folder where it cannot make any damage. For no reason will I assume any responsibility about using an FTP client. This kind of operation should be the Alpha and Omega an Internet service user should have in their DNA. If you haven't, please excercise, but not with my plugin and not your forums!

[Videx]

I can understand y2ksw's reluctance to encourage you to play with FTP, but in fact it is designed to merge directories, not overwrite them. e.g. When updating vb, I just change the name of the "upload' folder to "forum" and drop it on my public_html folder in Filezilla. No need to go scrounging around in multiple sub-folders this way.

[fxdigi-cash]

I'm just wondering if anyone has managed to use this mod on vb4.2 pl3 and made it work.... I tried, but nothing showing....

I checked it many times, but nothing worked till now...

any idea???