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

[Apolo.]

Why don't you try to insert your Flash banner this way:

<code>
<object height="60" width="468" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="path/to/banner.swf?clickTAG=http://urlgoes.here/"/>
<param name="WMode" value="transparent"/>
<param name="quality" value="high"/>
<param name="menu" value="false"/>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/>
<param name=play value=true>
<param name=loop value=true>
<param name="movie" value="path/to/banner.swf?clickTAG=http://urlgoes.here/"/>
<p>Alternative text goes here</p>
</object>
</code>

[nhawk]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I just finally got flash banners working on my forum but I was not able to use the embed ot object code. The only way it worked for me was to put the target link and the link to the flash banner in the two text fields:



and then set all three check boxes below that to "Yes":

I haven't had a problem displaying flash banners. That has always worked.

The problem comes when you have a banner in such a position that a menu needs to drop down over them. My modification of the code allows that. But, now when the banner is clicked sometimes two windows open. One with the actual proper link, another with the banner itself.

Originally Posted by Apolo.

Why don't you try to insert your Flash banner this way:

<code>
<object height="60" width="468" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="path/to/banner.swf?clickTAG=http://urlgoes.here/"/>
<param name="WMode" value="transparent"/>
<param name="quality" value="high"/>
<param name="menu" value="false"/>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/>
<param name=play value=true>
<param name=loop value=true>
<param name="movie" value="path/to/banner.swf?clickTAG=http://urlgoes.here/"/>
<p>Alternative text goes here</p>
</object>
</code>

The banner supplied by the client is not clicktag enabled.

[Apolo.]

Originally Posted by nhawk

The banner supplied by the client is not clicktag enabled.

Then simply ignore the clickTAG part and have your client insert the destination link. Either way, the code I provided was just a suggestion.

[univyang]

I had installed Rotating Banner System. This system is working on Header 1, and Below Navbar, but not Above Content 1. I do not know why. Can anyone tell me? Thanks.

[nhawk]

Originally Posted by univyang

I had installed Rotating Banner System. This system is working on Header 1, and Below Navbar, but not Above Content 1. I do not know why. Can anyone tell me? Thanks.

Do you have 3 banners defined?

If you only have 2 banners and they are already displayed in Header 1 and Below Navbar, the Above Content has nothing to display.

[nhawk]

For those having the same problem I was having with the flash banner itself loading in one window and the link for the banner in another, the attached swf fixes that problem.

In the original swf supplied with the Banner System, there were two items, one with an onClipEvent (mouseUp) and one with an on (release) event which are in effect the same thing, and this was causing two windows to open.

This swf eliminates the onClipEvent (mouseUp) for the banner container and leaves the on (release) for the button. That way click tracking continues to work.

Changes made to flash source:

REMOVED:

onClipEvent (mouseUp)
{
    getURL(_root.banner, "_blank");
}

LEFT INTACT:

on (release)
{
    getURL(_root.jlink, "_blank");
}

[univyang]

Originally Posted by nhawk

Do you have 3 banners defined?

If you only have 2 banners and they are already displayed in Header 1 and Below Navbar, the Above Content has nothing to display.

Thanks. I have 8 banners defined. All of them are displayed in Header 1. Now How can I solve my problem?

[nhawk]

Originally Posted by univyang

Thanks. I have 8 banners defined. All of them are displayed in Header 1. Now How can I solve my problem?

I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking and didn't realize you meant in the archive.

I just checked, and I have the same problem.

[univyang]

Originally Posted by nhawk

I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking and didn't realize you meant in the archive.

I just checked, and I have the same problem.

How can we solve this problem? Thanks.

[valdet]

It's been a long time since I used this mod and with new changes and features I cannot get this to work on my vB 3.6.7 version.

I have tried every imaginable thing and the templates are returning only the raw code of placeholder name.

Here are the screenshots of my settings:

Banner Settings:


General settings:


and Template code on my navbar template


I have vBSEO and I used custom placeholder name to avoid HTML cleanup issue.

At beginning nothing was even showing up. Once I changed hook locations for plugin Banner Insertion from global_complete to parse_templates, only the raw placeholder code is shown and not the actual banner as in:

#reklama:0#
#reklama:1#

Can someone advise how to get around this problem and make it work with 3.6.7 version?

I am using image banner and need to have click tracking feature enabled.

Many thanks for your time.