Meh, I know my way around the template system fairly well, its never bothered me editing it via admincp :p

I have no doubt you know the template system like the proverbial back of your hand. I just don't see how anyone could possibly want to use the ACP to edit templates, when they could be using an 'intelligent' HTML/CSS editor instead, and never have to touch the ACP.

IDE's or even basic code editors provide all kinds of nifty support for editing HTML/CSS, like attribute completion, syntax checking, pretty printing, complex search / replace, code snippets, macros, etc. If you have a good IDE (or just install WinMerge), it will also handle diff'ing and merging, making vB upgrading a snap - upgrade, use ATC to dump everything in Master and any customized styles in separate directories, do a "directory diff and merge" in your editor / WinMerge, done.

I just don't see why anyone who does anything like any serious template editing wouldn't want to take advantage of all that.

-- hugh

I love you.

i was able to enable ( :D ) debug mode...but now what do i have to do to find the html file?

thanks!

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Feature suggestions:

Make it able to update css too. One of the things I hate the most is the vBulletin CSS editor.

If I create an html file in the template folder that isn't currently a customized template have it detect such and edit the style to customize that template.

by the way, in the $config, what do you mean for product_id and version?

if i set it on:

it doesn't create any html page on the template folder...

Thank you for such smart idea. It saves a lot of time and efforts.
Tthanks again.

Now, this is a very useful modification. Thank you for creating it. Maybe you should suggest jelsoft that they include this into their distribution. Not that I will installing any of the 3.7.0+ versions due to a lot of networking crap in there that I don't think can even be turned off, but still...

Does this work for 3.7.0 RC1?

Let me see if I understand this thing.

Does this mean that with this installed I can open my vBulletin in Dreamweaver, make whatever changes I want, and then it will be updated on my site just like that to reflect the changes I made? If so, that's awesome.

Any chance of some screenshots?

I like to know what I'm installing before I install it...saves a lot of work later :)

My host has an upgrade to 5.0 button in my website panel but am reluctant to click on it until everything I have on my vbulletin site works with it....is it backwards compatible?

There is nothing to screenshot...

Yes. Your templates basically become html files you can edit with your choice of editor. Any changes you make will be automatically compiled back into vB the next time any page is loaded.

-- hugh

Now that makes sense. Kind of like downloading a html page, editing it, uploading it again and vb converts it back into a template ready for use.

Good idea :)

I've got this rather strange issue. Earlier I downloaded 41 templates, formatted them and reuploaded via SSH. ATC found them.

Now, I added phrases to all those templates from my desktop and again reuploaded. ATC can't find them. If I open from server and save (without doing anything) ATC finds them .... Are there any issues with ATC and variables?

Maybe it is checking the created or modified date on the file?

I haven't been able to get this to work. I'm not sure what's going wrong. Would you mind updating the product here?

So i went and downloaded the code from the SVN, which wasnt entirely working (much like ATC was).

Attached is a few modifications (and screenshots).

Currently it only works for the master style (-1).

It does support wildcards for the product field (example: ./templates/Master/vBulletin, %, 0, -1 )

I've come across a similar issue ... I'll bug AJ about it when I can catch him online. He's getting harder and harder to to pin down as his Daddyhood Date approaches!

-- hugh

Ok. I downloaded and installed this and now I'm completely clueless as to where to go from here. Is there any kind of "Getting Started" steps, tutorials, or something to kick us Noobs in the right direction? I'd like to use DW CS3. What information do I add to the Plugin... Do I create a "/template" folder on my hosting service or locally? I'm also currently using Wamp locally and would like to replicate my remote vb installation on my home PC.. or is that not the right way to do it?

Any help would be appreciated,
Jim

As I said previously, very good hack, another idea is to allow organized plugin / phrase modification from the file system. Maybe we can cooperate in developing this into a multi-purpose system?

this modification is not for the average joe, its for developers and people who know what it does without having to have had it explained.

Sorry, I missed this reply.

I have another version in development which has another level of abstraction to handle different 'items' (templates, phrases, etc.)

You can take that over if you'd like - I have it in my SVN repos. somewhere. I usually develop things just enough to suit my needs and then I'm swamped with work and don't progress it until months later.

See my repeated requests in the Private Coders Forum for a Private Coders Mods section. ;)

-- hugh

Well, I'm fairly savvy when it comes to these types of things and I find it absolutely confusing. I've followed what little directions there are... and I can't get it to generate the files. I never get errors, but it doesn't work either.

I'd be more than happy to join in on some joint dev work. I know Adrian is tired of me bugging him to add more features ...

-- hugh

How does one go about exporting vbulletin's templates to the filesystem with the CVS version? As it seems to be missing since the name change.

Also, does one set up a watch folder before starting to create a new product? Or after? Or do I have to do some process to output the templates to the filesystem?

Ummm... where does the folder need to be? in your forum root or includes?

does it import automagically?

I'm not the "average joe" thank you very much. I am a developer, I just don't develop vbulletin addons, etc 24/7. If this is supposed to be some sort of tool for the elite they way make it available to the public? Besides the so-called developers you speak of had to learn about how to use it at some point, right? How about sharing the love and share some info with some part time vbulletin developers?

Please? :D

Jim

for the elite? You watch the elections too much LOL

The mod was pretty easy to use i thought, and i am the average joe coder.

In the SVN sources, i had to add a vbb plugin to the product so that you could export templates to the proper directory. I think i might have spent maybe 30 minutes looking through the source to figure out what and how to do anything i needed.

I do agree though that there is a pretty big importance on documentation, but it's also obvious that the original author posted more of a proof of concept product rather than a complete tool that can be used with little understanding as to why it works. I have thought of taking the SVN code and building upon it to complete his work, but my skill in object languages isnt up to the task at this time.

A tool that does this for plugins would be a god send. *drools* just thinking about it, and phrases too! Not having to deal with the phrase manager one at a time...*drools more*

I've been trying to find resources to teach myself php's object programming ways so i can figure out what the original author has done and apply a similar method to the plugin system but i end up playing world of warcraft or watching Chef Gordon Ramsay on hulu.com or something :|

Although, who ever creates a working system to edit plugins via text file v.s. the plugin editor will hold the mod of the month spot for quite some time :)

What I do for plugins during development is simply require a file with my actual code in it, like ...

This has two advantages ...

1) I can use my regular PHP editor on the code itself.

2) I can use xdebug (i.e. step through the code, enable breakpoints, etc), which you can't do with directly eval'ed code.

Once the code is ready for release, I just paste it into the plugin and get rid of the require.

-- hugh

Andreas released an ajax "Add New Phrase" on vbulletin-germany that does just that. Extremely useful.

Hugh / Anthony,

You are welcome to take it over and extend it to plugins and phrase. I think phrases is already done though, just kinda slow with this method.

So how do we go about getting access to this mod thread? I'd rather keep it in place than create a new one.

-- hugh

I just jumped over there and i gotta admit, i'm highly impressed with his work. It takes a bit of work to get things worked out because right now it's all in german, but it's well worth the effort.

Andreas method is to create a folder, /addondev/pluginname/plugins or /addondev/pluginname/template and for the plugins, your filename is simply the hook that it belongs to. the name of the template is just that (with .tpl at the end).

When you refresh/visit your site, it loads up the data thats stored on the disk. When you export your product for distribution it reads all of the data from the disk and adds it to the xml file.

I created a plugin w/the name of my domain that i've placed extra templates such as custom templates for vbadvanced pages and modified style templates and it all works as expected.

There is a wealth of developer's tools over there