Version: 2.4.2, by y2ksw
Developer Last Online: Feb 2023
Category: Miscellaneous Hacks -
Version: 4.x.x
Rating:
Released: 08-15-2008
Last Update: 09-08-2013
Installs: 1237
DB Changes Uses Plugins
Additional Files Translations
No support by the author.
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.
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.
2.0.7: 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.
I'd like to put that banner stats page on a forum page. Basically I followed the instructions in that thread and pasted the content of the rbs_stats.php file into the new template but for some reason it breaks the code and won't work.
If anyone could get this to work, probably going to require fanangaling some code around but I'd appreciate it if someone could help me figure it out!
Ok, it's working perfectly fine, but I'm not so confident in the statistics for each banner. I think the impressions are accurate, but the "clicks" are not. I know this because I've clicked a few myself in testing. I have that option enabled. Also, on the rbs_stats.php, the impressions vary slightly from what I see in "Banner List" for one ad. Not a big deal, but accurate reporting would be helpful to be able to show my sponsors.
Only if they're naive enough to believe it means anything.
Not sure I follow. Accurate impressions and clicks are of great interest to our sponsors - and in the business I run, that's very important. I'm not running Google Adsense ads...I have targeted sponsors and have ongoing communication and dialogue with the owners of those companies. I can provide them with Google Analytics stats for pageviews/etc....but being able to show them how many times their banners were displayed and also clicked would both be valuable metrics.
I went back 5 pages and couldn't find any instructions on how to do this, not looking forward to going through all 100+ of them.
Maybe add a note in the instructions or in the thread somewhere ?
I did try using just the standard URL with the bannerid in the ad and not the userid and it didn't result in any clicks being tracked. id forumname.com/rbs_banners.php?id=11 will redirect to the proper URL but no clicks are tracked.
Edit - I just found out that clicks don't track if you go straight to the URL in your browser, you have to physically click the link shown via rbs lol, thanks. I was testing it by just pasting the URL with the banner ID into my browser and no clicks were showing :/
So will this still work if we change the name of the rbs_banner.php file? Just so I can have a pretty URL at the bottom.
So the links might show something like myforum.com/goodstuff.php?id=26 as the URL instead of myforum.com/rbs_banner.php
Here is the last post of a series which is showing how to achieve click tracking with text banners
And thanks for your post about page ranks. Although I know very well how it works, your information added some aspects explained much better than I ever could do
Anf yes, you may rename the rbs_banner.php file and the call, but then you must remember at every upgrade to make these changes.
Ok, it's working perfectly fine, but I'm not so confident in the statistics for each banner. I think the impressions are accurate, but the "clicks" are not. I know this because I've clicked a few myself in testing. I have that option enabled. Also, on the rbs_stats.php, the impressions vary slightly from what I see in "Banner List" for one ad. Not a big deal, but accurate reporting would be helpful to be able to show my sponsors.
The statistics are only reliable in the moment you are taking the snapshot. On busy sites all the counting can advance very fast. Also, some data may arrive later due to the nature of queries pushed into the shutdown queue of queries, and some may never arrive if a service doesn't reply in time.
In the end however, the statistics are very reliable, just try it on a test board and watch what it does. At the backend you may monitor the rbs_* tables, too. Under normal circumstances, every click is traced.
I've installed the most recent release. I noticed that if I input a destination URL (for an image), then input the image HTML in the text area, my banners are not clickable. I have to actually input the <a href=" in the text area to have my banners linked. Is that by design? What is the destination URL form used for?
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04-22-2012, 02:01 PM
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