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

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bzcomputers

He just talking about using the same place holder like....


<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:3@--></div><br />
<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:3@--></div><br />
<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:3@--></div><br />
<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:3@--></div><br />
<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:3@--></div><br />
<div align="center"><!--@vbbanners:3@--></div>

Then just making sure you have at least that number of ads under the single placeholder so that no ads are duplicated on a page.

This doesn't matter. No ad is ever duplicated on a single page, but missing ads show a blank

[Judith2]

thanks for the help

[bzcomputers]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

This doesn't matter. No ad is ever duplicated on a single page, but missing ads show a blank

Did not know, or at least did not remember. Probably should go back and read the documentation again it's been awhile.


Couple of requests/suggestions.

1) Add an expiration date column to all the Banner Lists in the Admin CP. This way it's easier to keep track of the ads that will be expiring soon without having to page through them all individually.

2) Include global.php for rbs_stats.php. I think the statistics would look a lot better and more professional if they were contained within the framework of the web site.

3) Add an option to show a different timezone (other than GMT) universally on the statistics page.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bzcomputers

Did not know, or at least did not remember. Probably should go back and read the documentation again it's been awhile.


Couple of requests/suggestions.

1) Add an expiration date column to all the Banner Lists in the Admin CP. This way it's easier to keep track of the ads that will be expiring soon without having to page through them all individually.

2) Include global.php for rbs_stats.php. I think the statistics would look a lot better and more professional if they were contained within the framework of the web site.

3) Add an option to show a different timezone (other than GMT) universally on the statistics page.

Added to wish list

However, I believe I will leave this product as is for vbulletin 3-4, since it has done an almost perfect job over many years now. For vbulletin 5, I have to reinvent the wheel and most probably I will then offer a 2-step product, which first will be developed and maintained on my servers and then later released (if desired) as a stand-alone package.

The point is, vbulletin 5 does not have the old hook system any more and it is not possible to replace from within a "new" plugin parts of a fully rendered page. Thus it needs a banner system which implements the current functionallity off-line and users will implement banners using a widget.

In other words, this product will go one step back to what it was before (stand-alone) and one step forth in order to accomodate all the features which were constantly missing, such as having "simply" a fully driven advertising system. This will also open for some very new scenarios, such as advertising groups, affiliation codes and shared banners in large networks.

But since these extra features are costly in terms of traffic, I will release the whole thing as soon it is stable enough, unless we can agree to a number of my banners on your boards to cover the expenses. I have seen, it works good enough to keep the current project going, but a dedicated server has evidently a much higher cost.

[Toorak Times]

Please don't abandon 4.2.1 mate, I haven't started to use this mod yet, but it is as you say awesome. As a newspaper publisher I am only just starting to get my head around the publishing suite, and most mod builders ONLY think of forums, when the CMS, Calendars< groups and Blogs are the parts of vB I need advancements on.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Toorak Times

Please don't abandon 4.2.1 mate, I haven't started to use this mod yet, but it is as you say awesome. As a newspaper publisher I am only just starting to get my head around the publishing suite, and most mod builders ONLY think of forums, when the CMS, Calendars< groups and Blogs are the parts of vB I need advancements on.

The add-on works perfectly on 4.2.1.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Toorak Times

Please don't abandon 4.2.1 mate, I haven't started to use this mod yet, but it is as you say awesome. As a newspaper publisher I am only just starting to get my head around the publishing suite, and most mod builders ONLY think of forums, when the CMS, Calendars< groups and Blogs are the parts of vB I need advancements on.

I won't, but all the extra goodies, which are impossible to add on this system, will have to come elsewhere

If it was for me, I would have preferred this system here, because external data is always a hassle, even if you pull it in from your own servers.

[Toorak Times]

Until they put a real CMS in 5 this will be the one for content driven sites, I'd use vB5 as a linked social network maybe atm

[Judith2]

I have a tick placed so that the clicks are counted, but nothing is displayed!!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Judith2

I have a tick placed so that the clicks are counted, but nothing is displayed!!

Scripts will not count unless you craft them specifically. Google AdSense is a good example for which you never will get a count.