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 anabolika

Hi,

I can't seem to get it to work I'm running 4.0.2 , is it tested for this version? I've tried all placeholders in the forum block manager and I still see <!--@vbbanners:0@--> or <!--@vbbanners:0-->

Is there a way to check for errors?

It is tested in 4.0.2 and except for another heavily hacked and modded board, it runs.

If you see <!--@vbbanners:0--> in your HTML code and this product is enabled, it is a proof, that the global_complete hook never executes, thus some of your products/applications intercept this hook and drop standard execution of the vbulletin code. There is nothing I can do about this.

If you know the intercepting product, you may try to move the plugin hooks somewhere else, probably to the replacing hooks, but it is not guaranteed to work.

[Traxion]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Please try to show a standard image banner and disable the Google ads. Also check if your banner will show up in a normal HTML page

I have tried to place a standard image banner but with no luck. I dont know if im doing something wrong in the Image / Flash area or not. I have just been putting in the full location of the image I want displayed and in the URL box putting its click destination address. Im sure its something simple, but I just cant get it figured out. Thanks so much for your help on this.

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Traxion

I have tried to place a standard image banner but with no luck.

What about the other thing he told you to try? If you can't get a plain jpg banner to show in a normal html page then you'll never get them to show in this mod.

[Traxion]

I assume you mean just typing the full address to the image and seeing if it pulls up in browser the answer is yes.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Traxion

I assume you mean just typing the full address to the image and seeing if it pulls up in browser the answer is yes.

Please put in place of the banner placeholder (or in addition) a simple 'X' and check if this shows up, e.g.:

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->X

Edit:
May it be that you have used just: <!--@vbbanners:0--> instead of <!--@vbbanners:0@--> (missing final @)?

[Traxion]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

Please put in place of the banner placeholder (or in addition) a simple 'X' and check if this shows up, e.g.:

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->X

Edit:
May it be that you have used just: <!--@vbbanners:0--> instead of <!--@vbbanners:0@--> (missing final @)?

Not sure what happened, but after testing with the 'X' outside the <> and it showing correctly it started working. Im sure I messed something up somewhere, but good news is that it works!! Thanks for all your help!

[Antonio Pereira]

Have installed:
Rotating Banner System: 2.2.6
Vbulletin: 4.0.3
and have a problem wen make zoom with mouse "Ctrl+Scroll Mouse"

The Flash dont zoom if i put flash banner in HTML zoom is ok.

Did you have a fix for this?

Best Regards

[pepsicola38]

should the code be entered as
<!--@vbbanners:0@-->
<!--@vbbanners:4@-->

or

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->
<!--@vbbanners:1@-->
<!--@vbbanners:2@-->
<!--@vbbanners:3@-->
<!--@vbbanners:4@-->

thanks

[djbaxter]

Weird bug: I have this add-on installed in 4.03 currently (but have been using it since 3.8x through 4.01 and 4.02).

I have the banners inserted in some custom places but in order to minimize template reverts and editing where possible I use the vBulletin ACP | Advertising settings and insert the <!--@vbbanners:0@--> or <!--@vbbanners:1@--> codes there.

The only bug I've found is a persistent though internittent one: Using the Below Navbar location in combination with <!--@vbbanners:1@--> defined as a leaderboard size (wide) banner (rotating between AdSense and some affiliate banners), most of the time it works fine. Very now and then, though, it will stop displaying banners at that location (other locations continue to work). To fix it, I need to go back into that location in the ACP, click on Edit, and then Save without making any changes.

I'm really not 100% certain whether this is an issue with this add-on or a vBulletin 4.x issue. However, for a while, I disabled the add-on and hard-coded the ads in that location (i.e., no rotation) and the problem did not occur under those conditions.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by pepsicola38

should the code be entered as
<!--@vbbanners:0@-->
<!--@vbbanners:4@-->

or

<!--@vbbanners:0@-->
<!--@vbbanners:1@-->
<!--@vbbanners:2@-->
<!--@vbbanners:3@-->
<!--@vbbanners:4@-->

thanks

You enter only one at a time in each location where you want that set of banners to be rotated. Enter EITHER <!--@vbbanners:0@--> OR <!--@vbbanners:1@--> OR <!--@vbbanners:2@--> OR <!--@vbbanners:3@--> OR <!--@vbbanners:4@-->.

It would be rare that you'd want to have more than one group in a specific location, unless you want them side by side or one under the other.