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

[jnrdavo]

Hi Guys, I love this product and use it on 5 forums that I am running.

I'm just starting up a new forum, with VB5 Connect (got to give it a go sometime!).

Has anybody tried this on VB5? I'm assuming that it won't work at all. Is there any workaround?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Greta@CPF

I am using this mod with the vBulletin Advertising system. It has served me quite well for several years now! But now I find I would like to have specific ads in specific forums. This is all fine except there is no option in the display criteria list to:

Criteria for ad are met

There is only:

Criteria for ad are not met

Is there any way to adjust this?

Originally Posted by y2ksw

It never was asked. What kind of criteria would you not apply?

Originally Posted by Greta@CPF

I have my Position 2 banners displaying in rotation below the navbar on a global level with no criteria checked so those banners display on every page of my forums. Now I want to set up my Position 3 banners to display in only one forum (Bicycle Forum) in place of the Position 2 banner with the criteria set for when user is browsing that specific forum. So it would be helpful to be able to set the Position 2 banners criteria to: "Criteria for ad <Bicycle Forum> ARE met.

Does that make sense?

Edit added for clarification: Wait... I just thought that through again and it won't work either. Ok - so how do I do what I want to do using the vBulletin Advertising system?

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Yes. You can solve this problem by selecting all forums but the one to be excluded for position 2, just the one forum for position 3.

If specific forums are selected, the ads disappear on the home page and other pages which are NOT a specific forum.

How do I get around this problem?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Forensic

Two questions,
Can I display a single banner from within a large group of banners using the banner Id?
Is there a way to display a single group of banners in forum home and selective forums without maintaining redundant groups of banners?

I have our banners set to show everywhere. I can't use the Forums selection as it removes it from forum home and I can't select forum home because it removes it from forums.

If I can show a single banner I believe I can use an IF/Else statement to show a single banner for a forum id otherwise show the rotation.

Originally Posted by y2ksw

1. No. But you can duplicate a banner setting and have it (1) on forum home and (2) on certain forum sections as well.
2. Then you would not select anything (nor home neither single sections) and that's it.
3. You can show a single banner only if you have one banner per each location. However this product is intended to show as many banners as you have for a single location at a near to random frequency. Aditionally, you may define a weight and thus show some banners less or more frequently.

Okay... so duplicate the ad and in the duplicate version click Forum Home so it shows there too. Am I reading this correctly?

[djbaxter]

Just confirming that this (the two posts above) worked perfectly.

Thanks, y2ksw!

[TheLastSuperman]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Just confirming that this (the two posts above) worked perfectly.

Thanks, y2ksw!

This is literally my third favorite mod on this site, I've used it hundreds of times over and being able to paste other ad system codes into this just seals the deal.

Glad you got it working properly .

[Scream And Fly]

Hi, I've been using this addon for years and it's great.

I have a question about the horizontal banners. My site forums are located at http://www.screamandfly.com/forum.php

The horizontal banners display on the top and bottom. I was wondering if there is any easy way to specify the horizontal banners to only display in the header? Also, does this addon prevent the VBulletin system horizontal banners (above footer) from displaying?

Thank you!

[rhody401]

If you put all of the horizontal banners into the same group/position #, and reference that group in the header of the forum where you want them to display, it will just use that group there.

[Scream And Fly]

Thank you rhody I appreciate your help. I did not originally install this modification on my forums (my admin did, and unfortunately, he is no longer with us). So I am a bit ignorant as to why things are as they are. It appears that I have only one location for horizontal banners, and that location places all horizontal banners into rotation in both locations - above the footer, and below the header. I assume my old site admin set it up so 'position 0' is referenced in both those locations? I see no option to place banners in those two locations respectively.

Here is a screenshot of the CP for the banner system. Position 0 is for horizontal banners in both positions collectively. All other positions seem to be for vertical banners.

Thanks again for your help.

[rhody401]

If you have some that are a custom size and you want them isolated from the others, you could use group2 or group3 just for those, and reference it from the code that shows in your header. As long as the banners reference group 2, and the location references group 2, it will only pull from that group for that section.

I do something similar on one of my forums at www.ppfacorner.com If you refresh it several times, you'll see rotating banners from 3 different groups (each is a different size)

[KevinL]

figured it out