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 PossumX

Anyway to use this as a rotation function in the Sidebar (Forum Block)? I've been playing around with it, and I can't quite figure out how to set a custom placement into a Forum Block.

Any thoughts?

Thanks !!

Il believe sidebars are generated with widgets (?). In this case it may be necessary to create a HTML or PHP widget with a banner placeholder. I can't tell though, it's a designer issue ...

[morelia]

Quick Question.....

which template should I be using to get a banner in the blank space between the navbar and the body??

thanks...

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by morelia

Quick Question.....

which template should I be using to get a banner in the blank space between the navbar and the body??

Admin CP > Advertising > Manage ads / Add New Ad > Global Below Navbar

[Big-Pete]

I can't get this to show up in a CMS widget, Do i need to use a static html widget? and do i just put @vbbanners:%d@ in it??

I have vbseo installed, I've changed the place holder as per the PDF but still can't get it to work.

[morelia]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Admin CP > Advertising > Manage ads / Add New Ad > Global Below Navbar

Thats included in the body.

I want to use the space between the body and navbar..

[nhawk]

Originally Posted by morelia

Thats included in the body.

I want to use the space between the body and navbar..

I realize this is an older post but I see nobody has replied.

In Styles & Templates, select the navbar template for your style.

Look for this code..

{vb:raw ad_location.ad_navbar_below}
{vb:raw ad_location.global_below_navbar}

Copy those two lines and then look for this code..

</div><!-- closing div for above_body -->

<div class="body_wrapper">

Then paste what you copied between the two lines above like this..

</div><!-- closing div for above_body -->

{vb:raw ad_location.ad_navbar_below}
{vb:raw ad_location.global_below_navbar}

<div class="body_wrapper">

Then delete the original lines you copied. The ads will now be between the header and body of the forum.

[ecky]

I'm about to upgrade from 2.2.6. to 2.3.1.
Will all my settings and click counters be reset during the upgrade?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Big-Pete

I can't get this to show up in a CMS widget, Do i need to use a static html widget? and do i just put @vbbanners:%d@ in it??

I have vbseo installed, I've changed the place holder as per the PDF but still can't get it to work.

Probably this ... I suppose widgets are normally cached or use different rendering (no idea).

[oddmud]

I found out using the <!--@vbbanners:0@--> code will work in the vB Advertising program.

It didn't prior, but for some reason it is now working. I am using the BETA 4.1.2 MS. This may have something to do with it working properly in the advertisement section. It's much better when you don't have to edit code.

[voglermc]

how can I add a 10th vertical position?