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 BadgerDog

Installed on v4.04 with thanks for testing ...

We also use y2ksw's excellent Import External Images mod ... :up:

We have this mod running and it seems to work with for the most part, except some of the placeholder templates don't cause the ads to appear, but most do.

We have discovered a major conflict problem with our member's photo library. We use vBPicGallery and when y2ksw's banner mod is active, the javascipt screen slide show in vBPicGallery seizes up and stops, plus a random pic from a member's library storage seems to cover part of the screen with some kind of cosmetic glitch.

When we disable y2ksw's banner mod, the vbPicGallery slide show operation returns to normal.

Any ideas on how to resolve the conflict?

Thanks for any guidance ... :up:

Regards,
Doug

Banners are essentially images. You may try to code your images as HTML and place this code in the Text Field (as shown in the sample banners), but then your click tracking will not work. Alternatively you may try to use the Flash wrapper, which doesn't use the <img> tags, but then it won't work with iPhone/iPad devices and there are glitches with resizing the pages.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by theharem

colour me stupid...... This is the first mod I've tried to upload and for some reason I've totally screwed it up.

If anyone here can help out a newbie to this, please pm me I'm desperate for some tutoring via msn. Thanks

If you are new to plugins and products, this is not a good playfield and you are better off with not using it. With uninstalling or disabling the product, you should go fine.

Please try some less complex plugins first and take your time to understand how they work and what it needs. Best practices are to check always new products in a test bed, and if you are unsure about side effects, to make a backup of your database and your files.

And last not least, if a help file is given, read it. In this product there is an extensive help available, and questions may be asked in this forum about almost all issues you may run into. For example, to get general help with installing products: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=112

[theharem]

Thank you.... have a big learning curve so I'll go study that link you gave me.

[HellRZR]

ciao,

I have a question?

Is this possible and will it impact anything if I use your system in this fashion.

I dont want to modify any VB templates or code if I dont have to, so I figured I would use it this way.

I go into the regular vb ad menu and create a new ad called header, in which I place this code <center><!--@vbbanners:0@--></center>.

Now I add all my banner ads that I wish to display in rotation in all my headers in your system position horzontal 0.

It seems to be working fine, but I just want to ensure there are no conflicts.

Is this a good idea?

[DFW Auto Club]

I've been using this on multiple forums without issue for some time now. Thx to y2ksw.

I recently upgraded to VB 4.1.2 and I am now seeing ads intermittently missing in alternating locations. Please advise if someone's aware of a fix. tia.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by HellRZR

ciao,

I have a question?

Is this possible and will it impact anything if I use your system in this fashion.

I dont want to modify any VB templates or code if I dont have to, so I figured I would use it this way.

I go into the regular vb ad menu and create a new ad called header, in which I place this code <center><!--@vbbanners:0@--></center>.

Now I add all my banner ads that I wish to display in rotation in all my headers in your system position horzontal 0.

It seems to be working fine, but I just want to ensure there are no conflicts.

Is this a good idea?

This is exactly the way one should use it: 1 location for all banners

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by DFW Auto Club

I've been using this on multiple forums without issue for some time now. Thx to y2ksw.

I recently upgraded to VB 4.1.2 and I am now seeing ads intermittently missing in alternating locations. Please advise if someone's aware of a fix. tia.

Probably you have reverted some templates with placeholders ...

[Gloria Culver]

All attempts to get this to install, either from uploading from my PC or importing from the server lead to a screen that says "Importing Product, please wait..." accompanied by a box that says "Please upload the files that came with the product before installing or ugrading! Missing files: :

I did upload all the files to the appropriated folders. Any idea what it could be peeved about? I did reboot the server just to clear it's little head, no help!

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Gloria Culver

All attempts to get this to install, either from uploading from my PC or importing from the server lead to a screen that says "Importing Product, please wait..." accompanied by a box that says "Please upload the files that came with the product before installing or ugrading! Missing files: :

I did upload all the files to the appropriated folders. Any idea what it could be peeved about? I did reboot the server just to clear it's little head, no help!

Probably your web service can't access the files you have uploaded by FTP. Please check the owners and access rights.

[Gloria Culver]

It's my server. It has full access to everything and no problem installing other programs or plug ins. I am baffled.