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 Tri@de

There's a way to display a banner in a certain date?

Yes, just set the start and end date and time accordingly.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by nacaruncr

I can't do anything to show the banner, I put <!--@vbbanners:0@--> or <!--@vbbanners:0--> in the ad_navbar_below or ad_footer_start and nothing, it doesn't show anyone image, I don't know if I have to put other choise in the code, or what I doing wrong? because I search in the video-tutorial and nothing :S
someone can help me please?

Please have a tiny bit more patience (a few days). A few days ago I got my new publisher code and I'm now testing the new release, which comes with a new set of working demo banners. The old demo banners won't work right now.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by vantastic

Great mod. Really easy to use. Thank you.

I have one suggestion though, and that's a dropdown to allow "target" for the url. This would be really neat as some ads are for internal threads, others are for external sites etc.

Currently I'm doing it in the additional text field which is OK, but for ease of use it'd be nice to have this.

Great work otherwise!

I don't see a good way to store landing pages anywhere ... isn't intellisense of your browser good enough?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by VBLUIS

Hello. Thanks for the mod. I rename the folder 'admincp' by 'england2010'. A part of the name of the folder 'admincp' I downloaded renamed 'england2010', do I have to change the name somewhere else?

thank you very much

No, the installation reads the admincp destination from your configuration, thus renaming the package admincp folder should be just fine.

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by bposner

I still have this problem with all my sites, the banner does not go to the URL it adds
It keeps doing this

http://www.mustanggenerations.com/forum/www.mustanggenerations.com/forum/rbs_banner.php?id=12&userid=2

For some unknown reason, sometimes $vbulletin->options['bburl'] translates to these or worse combinations. I solved this issue by using a global replacement (styles) where I would translate 'www.mustanggenerations.com/forum/www.mustanggenerations.com/forum/' to 'www.mustanggenerations.com/forum/'.

I believe it has to do with the Friendly URL settings and Canonical URL's, but I'm not sure about it, nor was I able to reproduce the problem.

[Tri@de]

I want to put in header the banner, but i see the header and the banner. Can i select just the banner?

[regd87]

I've installed this and followed all the directions but it's still not showing at my forum. Help?

[vantastic]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I don't see a good way to store landing pages anywhere ... isn't intellisense of your browser good enough?

Sorry maybe I didn't make my suggestion clear. I'll try again.

When setting up an advert, you are prompted for imageurl and url

currently the output is something like:

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://yoursite.com/image.png" /></a>

The 'target' should be a variable - so that one can select _blank, _self etc.

[sonic83]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

No, the installation reads the admincp destination from your configuration, thus renaming the package admincp folder should be just fine.

Thanks for responding. For some reason it does not work. I have version 4.1.10 and reviewing past posts there is only one small mention of this version. They can confirm if it works for 4.1.10?
thanks

[Videx]

Originally Posted by VBLUIS

Thanks for responding. For some reason it does not work. I have version 4.1.10 and reviewing past posts there is only one small mention of this version. They can confirm if it works for 4.1.10?
thanks

This mod doesn't actually use vb much at all (except for the admincp page), so it works with all versions. Your original question was very confusing and made no sense, having to do with renaming folders or something.