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

[emdee]

the default/preloaded sample ads work ok, but when creating new ads and saving them im getting error:
any ideas why? please explain in detail (noob here)

PHP Code:

Database error in vBulletin 3.7.4:

Invalid SQL:
INSERT INTO rbs_banners (
            id, 
            name, 
            url, 
            image, 
            text, 
            startdate, 
            enddate, 
            notes, 
            maximpressions, 
            vertical, 
            forumids,  
            enabled,
            forumhome,
            clicktrack,
            mails,
            usergroups
            ) VALUES (
            NULL, 
            'New banner', 
            'http://www.vbulletin.org', 
            '', 
            '<a href=\"http://www.vbulletin.org\">vbulletin</a>', 
            '1229262600', 
            '1260798600', 
            '', 
            '0', 
            '0', 
            '', 
            '1', 
            '0', 
            '0',
            '',  
            '',
            );

MySQL Error   : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ')' at line 35
Error Number  : 1064
Request Date  : Sunday, December 14th 2008 @ 01:51:52 AM
Error Date    : Sunday, December 14th 2008 @ 01:51:52 AM
Script        : http://www.mydomain.com/forums/admincp/admin_rbs.php?do=edit
Referrer      : http://www.mydomain.com/forums/admincp/admin_rbs.php?do=edit
IP Address    : 69.196.139.105
Username      : the_admin_username
Classname     : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.51a-community 


[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by emdee

the default/preloaded sample ads work ok, but when creating new ads and saving them im getting error:
any ideas why? please explain in detail (noob here)

Thanks, bug is fixed in version 2.0.9

[Sunka]

To update, just overwrite xml or also upload on forum folder all files?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Sunka

To update, just overwrite xml or also upload on forum folder all files?

admincp/admin_rbs.php, plus import new product for version update.

[Sunka]

OK.
I've overwrite admincp/admin_rbs.php, and overwrite product...
Everything look OK
Grazie form Croatia

[Apolo.]

Hi,

Just to report that the upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.0.9 messed up the whole thing. The banners went like crazy, showing up at the top, even the vertical banners. It seems the upgrade is affecting the main template somehow.

I had to downgrade back to 2.0.6 to get this fixed.

Regards.

[emdee]

installed latest version 2.0.9
newly created ads are not showing. not getting an any errors, they are just not showing

im not sure if its the ad ID 4 and over ( ie ad id 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.) that is the problme and are not showing , or if there is a differnet issue going on

later on:
i deleted all the preloaded ads
created new ones
and they are not showing

thanks

[redlabour]

Awesome Hack! Clicked Install!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by emdee

installed latest version 2.0.9
newly created ads are not showing. not getting an any errors, they are just not showing

im not sure if its the ad ID 4 and over ( ie ad id 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.) that is the problme and are not showing , or if there is a differnet issue going on

later on:
i deleted all the preloaded ads
created new ones
and they are not showing

thanks

Please restart

I believe you just installed the product and attend the ads to appear magically on your forums. Well, this isn't the way it works

Install the product and keep the preinstalled ads. These are guaranteed to work everywhere. Then, write a message in a test area, and put @vbbanners@ inside the text. After saving, there should be a banner. If there isn't any, you are doing something wrong, e.g. check the spelling, verify you actually have active and enabled banners for the desired placeholder, refresh the page.

Once the ads start to show up, refine with user groups and forums selection, until you get what you want. Also you may add your own banners and copy some of the settings.

Then, add to your templates the @vbbanners@ placeholder, or the placeholder you have defined in the Rotating Banner System Options.

[viper357]

I have the vBIspy hack installed and the banners are not showing on this page, it just shows @vbbanners@, any idea on how to fix this? Not a major problem and I'm not too concerned about it, just if there's a quick fix to it then I would appreciate it, thanks

This is the link to the hack I am talking about
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=125947

I'm running 3.6.12 and v2.0.6 of your hack.