How to add a flash block on vBulletin 3.6.8 the proper way

[ropox]

Hello,

i was looking for a quick way to embed a flash module on my front page on my installed Vbulletin 3.6.8 with installed VBA CPMS

I saw a couple solutions but didn't fit my purposes saw i decided to post a custom easy solution for embedding flash content on a block.
I suppose you can use the instructions and apply them accordingly for other configurations as well.

Here it goes.

1. go to http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/ and download the zip file. This is a very nice and handy javascript for embedding flash and has more capabilities that the one that adobe is giving away.
2. extract the zip file locally on your pc and inside the folder you will find the file swfobject.js . Upload that on the clientscipt folder of your installation .
3. Go to Styles and Tempaltes -> Style Manager ->YOUR TEMPLATE->Edit Templates -> and edit the header headinclude. In there add the block

<script type="text/javascript" src="clientscript/swfobject.js"></script> 

Remember not to put in on any if blocks and after the meta tags. on src tag we see the we simply add the path of the script that we uploaded. I f we use a different folder we change accordingly. This will include on all our pages the needed source file for the job.

4. Add a new template under the style manager and name it
for e.g. adv_portal_homeLeftAdBlock Where homeLeftAdBlock could be anything that you want describing where exactly you will put your module.
Add the following :

<div id="somedivname"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
        // <![CDATA[        
        var so = new SWFObject("_folder_/flash.swf", "demo", "120", "240", "9", "#FFFFF");        
        so.write("somedivname");        
        // ]]>
    </script> 

what we see here is a div where the flash will be displayed and the id is a name whatever we want. under that there is the code where
_folder_/flash.swf is the path to our file in our server
demo just a name for this flash
120 is the width of our flash object
240 is the height of our flash object
9 is the version of our flash object
#FFFFF is the background colour of our object
so.write("somedivname"); : HERE we write the ID name that we gave on top so the javascript can print on that div. make sure that name is unique in your page.


5. Next we go on VBA CPMS and we add a new template module and we dont have to use the module wrapper template , mainly the <td></td> and we assign it on a page with the order that we want.

I'm sure for those that dont have VBA CPMS installed is pretty much the same procedure without the modules insertion. There are more options to use with the flash object that you can find on the page http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/ , such as pass in parameters and other staff etc. there are instructions and demo pages as well.


that's it. easy nice and clean.


you can see an example on http://www.navimania.gr (its in greek) but you will get the point if you see the source