I've been working with web templates the past few days now, everything seems to be working well now, I'm still linking everything up on a test site before turning my main site into it.

I'm currently using a combo of Vb255/VbHome (lite)/ and your webtemplates to link other dynamic pages together. I am making a wish list for you then will post here as requested. I'm playing with setting up a web gallery template with your template system to my site, I've been having a lot of fun learning and experimenting. so thank you for your hard work on the project.

I've been working on it most of today, I have a link if you would like to see how it is coming along. The goal is to get my products/development/gallery etc etc linked up to the site with your template system.. if a link doesn't work it's cause i'm still testing. so far the install went beautifully again with my testsite.

http://testsite.orbsydia.com/index.php3

thanks

Rob

wow its very very good hack...and easy to install..you relly explained it good...
the only thing is to know the queries..the comman wich you put will not show any help file ??!!

I really didnt understand the question..

For Webqueries there is a special help page..Please first read that one. Then examining the sample page (whoareyou) and sample webqueries can help you understand the system and if there is anything you still cant understand, please ask away, but more clearly! :)

Regards,
Logician

We would love to use your hack, but we have 6 mySQL databases on our server. So am I correct in assuming that I cannot use this hack with more than one database on our server?

I'm not sure I understand why your hack just does not point to the correct VB database.

Thanks!

In fact we discovered this bug recently and although I've already fixed it, I'm just too lazy to update the script here.

You can use the hack: Just install it and see if you can load "whoareyou" template without any problems. If you get an MYSQL ERROR while loading this template, edit "show.php", find the line:

$cekilen_query=mysql_query("select id,name,query,noresulttext,tablerow from webtemplatequery order by id");

BEFORE THAT add:
--- cut --------------
$servername='localhost';
$dbusername='root'; //MYSQL username
$dbpassword=''; //MYSQL password
$dbname='xxx'; //database name

mysql_connect("$servername", "$dbusername", "$dbpassword") or die("Couldnt find MYSQL!");
mysql_select_db("$dbname") or die ("Couldnt find DB!");
--- cut --------------

Dont forget to edit your db details and you'll be just fine..

Enjoy!
Logician

I installed successfuly, everything works fine from admin but the query /show.php?pg=whoareyou returns
mySQL error:No Database Selected


in case that makes a difference: Although show.php is in the forum folder, I ran WEBTEMPLATES_INSTALL.PHP from the admin folder

never mind, I did not read post 45. :rolleyes:

This is indeed one of the best addons I have seen at vbulletin.org

nice work Logician :)

Excellent work, Logician!

Prior to installing this hack I had installed your news hack.

One of the first templates I will attempt is to create a template that will get the news.

just installed it, haven't tried it out yet.

just a couple suggestions (maybe for your next version, if you make one)--purely my opinion:
1) instead of the ~~~~cut~~~~ thing, make something like
*************** or ================ or ---------------

2) make it so that the hack does not even work if they have not yet deleted the install file :)

thanks for the hack! i'm gonna play around with it tonight or tomorrow:)

After a few headaches, I have concluded that I would need show.php to be able to handle PHP code in the webmaster-defined templates.

Logician - since you would be familiar with both hacks, do you think it would be possible create something similar to the news hack using web templates?

It's possible to compile news and post to a news page (not index.php though!) with WebTemplates Hack.

However considering the fact that you already applied Logician News Hack, you really wouldnt need WebTemplate for news. Logician News has more features for news like taking some part of the news, parsing smilies (Web Templates new release will do it too), having sticky news etc. So for news I suggest using Logician News, not Web Templates.

If you are tending to use WebTemplates, yes you can though. Just create a web query to compile data from your db and create a webtemplate to post them away. But it would be a little awkard at the moment since smilies, bbcode cant be parsed for example and you are for sure need show.php to display this page.

BTW. why to you want to combine both of them? The only reason I can think of is to apply vb access permissions to your news page and except this you wouldnt need to integrate two, would you?

The site that I would like to use this for is a subscription site where subscribers get access to additional content (e.g. files). I was considering a system where I could show all the most recent files that the user has access to (based on the usergroupid) on the left, and have the site news on the right.

While I like your news hack, one thing I wish it would do is use the colors defined in the user's selected style. I figured that templates solve this problem and are a more general approach to accessing information from the database for use in web pages.

I see.. Unfortunately it's not possible to combine Logician News and WebTemplates. If you want to create such an enviroment you need to stick with Webtemplates. It can help you to get the page you have in your mind, just one downside: It cant parse smilies and bbcode for your news yet. However I already added this feature to the new release which will be released soon, so I guess until you finish designing your page, it will be ready and you can use it with your news.

hi logician...

i tried to install your hack, but got this after the installation... i am lost at what to do...

Alan please double check if you applied step 3 correctly. It seems that you made a mistake in step 3. Check it out, reapply if necessary and if you cant figure that out send me your "functions.php" via pm and I'll take a look at it.

PM sent to you... thx in advance. :)

you know this hack seems kinda pointless I mean their is already a "Pages Via Templates" hack...so in my mind this hack is well...crap...

Already?

Pages Via Templates hack released in 03-27-02 05:49 AM
WebTemplates hack released in 03-22-02 07:58 PM

Make a subtraction..

I hope your maths is better than your "great" knowledge in coding and "wisdom" in critising something you have no idea.

logician,
i finally got mine up and running. great hack!
it seems that i have a little problem, i can't preview the WebQuery but I can preview the WebTemplate...
what can be the cause?
also, when i run http://myURL/show.php?pg=whoareyou, the list of messages seems NOT to be the latest posts.
when i try out your PM Query, the PMs that i get are all the Odd numbered ones... ???
can i re-install the Webtemplates? will it create another extra 2 tables or will it just write over?
oh, and one last thing (sorry too many:()... how do i link my index.htm to show the http://myURL/show.php?pg=whoareyou
please advice.
thx.

what do you mean by "you cant preview webquery"? You cant access webquery screen inside your Admin CP? Can you list webquery list in Admin CP when you click modify query? Can you access your webquery when you click one in the modify query screen? Or is it just webquery doesnt work when you load a webtemplate?

Please give some more details, I didnt get it.

Have you modified any webquery? Was it so when you first installed the hack and loaded whoareyou or did it become broken after sometime?

I must say that this is weird :)

Anyway here is my tips:
1- First apply the fix to show.php a few messages above and let's see if it will do the trick.

2- If not please delete your tables via these SQL commands:

drop table webtemplates;
drop table webtemplatequery;

(You have a tool to run a SQL query right? If not, you can use this one)

After deleting both, run installation script again..

Do you mean replacing your index.htm with this template or inserting the results returned from this template inside index.htm?

Or if you just mean to put the link of the template in index.htm, you should link it just like a normal internet URL:
<a href="http://myURL/show.php?pg=whoareyou">My Template</a>

BTW. can I see your webtemplate? What's the URL?

hi logician, thanks for your reply...



i can access the webquery, i can edit webquery, but i just can't preview, that's all. :)

Quote:

Have you modified any webquery? Was it so when you first installed the hack and loaded whoareyou or did it become broken after sometime? I must say that this is weird :)

after my installation, the problem already exists.
it is wierd, didn't see anyone else in here having the same problem. :(

Quote:

Anyway here is my tips: 1- First apply the fix to show.php a few messages above and let's see if it will do the trick.

pardon me, i don't get you... what is the fix that you are referring to?

Quote:

2- If not please delete your tables via these SQL commands: drop table webtemplates; drop table webtemplatequery; (You have a tool to run a SQL query right? If not, you can use this one) After deleting both, run installation script again..

this will be my last resort.

Quote:

Do you mean replacing your index.htm with this template or inserting the results returned from this template inside index.htm? Or if you just mean to put the link of the template in index.htm, you should link it just like a normal internet URL: <a href="http://myURL/show.php?pg=whoareyou">My Template</a> BTW. can I see your webtemplate? What's the URL?

yes, i mean replacing the html... is it possible to embed into the html?
the webtemplate is at www.poolfanatic.com/forum/show.php?pg=whoareyou

does "cant preview" mean, when you load your webtemplate, your webqueries are not displayed? However you can list/edit/insert them inside your Admin CP, right?

here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...547#post255547

You have a few options for this:
a) You can set your .htaccess file and point index.html as /url/board/show.php?pg=yourwebtemplate and so your main page will be this webtemplate
b) You can set your main page as index.php instead of index.html and in your index.php, you can include any webtemplate you want (see here for more info)

as you can guess I can see it, as I'm a guest. :) Please first apply the fix above and if it doesnt work give guests access (with [cansee] tags) to this webtemplate so that I can see it.

Nice one Logician - I'm just installing this hack on a test server and I am pretty impressed so far!

One question:

How do I include a template in another template? I thought you could just create a template and then use $templatename like we do with $header and $footer but it's coming up blank instead of including the template.

Man, I had just sat down to try and write something like this. Looks awesome!

I am going to install this on one of my test sites and see how it goes.

@grb123:The hack by default lets you include only 2 templates (header and footer) inside other templates. But considering the fact that I have received this request frequently nowadays, I might include such a feature to the new release.

However I'm can not follow the reason of including webtemplates into other templates. Can you please clarify why you need this feature? I mean you can simply insert the HTML code of the other template inside the other one and what will be the point of including the code as a seperate template?

Please also clarify if you want a feature to parse webqueries in the included webtemplate or not? I mean if the included template does not have webqueries in it, it can be simplier to add such a feature but if you have webqueries then the script need to parse them too which requires more work.

@futureal & grb123: Since you are testing the hack out, maybe you would be interested to test the new version (which has not been released yet). It's fully competable with the existing one so you can use your existing webtemplates and webqueries and it has powerful new features. If you want to help me test it out to catch bugs, add new features etc., please provide me with your email address so that I can send you the file. Thx.

Hi Logician

Thanks for the reply. The reason why I want to include templates is to make it easier for our site editor to update the sections he needs to update without getting lost in all the code in the rest of the page.

For example:

We have an Events page. This consists of three sections: the standard $header, a side bar which is specific to all the pages in the events section, and the list of events. At the moment the side bar and the events list are text files which are included in the page using SSI. The editor only has access to the events list which he updates as events are sent to us. This makes it easy to update as he only sees the bit that he updates.

I wanted to therefore create 3 WebTemplates: Events (main page), Events_Side (side bar) and Events_List (the list of events.) I could then tell the editor to just to to Events_List whenever he needed to update an event. If all of these are in one page, it is a lot of code in a small template box and for a non-IT person this can get very confusing.

The included template may have webqueries in it though it's not essential. Our side bars currently contain the last 10 posts from each forum depending on which page is being loaded, but I can also just not have an included side bar template if that makes it easier and instead just have two templates, Events and Events_List.

Hope that makes it clearer!

I would be more than happy to test the new version though I've only just installed this and haven't even tried the queries yet.

Another useful feature would be a backup for WebTemplates only, as per the vBulletin styles. I've done it using mysqldump and just dumping the webtemplates and webtemplatequery tables, but if we had it in the control panel that would be nice. OK, I could add it myself, but you may want to include it in a future version.

I've also noticed that if you include links in the footer, you need to hardcode them ie show.php?pg=pagename rather than {template=pagename].

Is there anyway that the vbulletin search can also include searching the WebTemplates pages?

Actually it is in your Admin CP: Click "Backup Database" inside vb Admin CP and choose tables webtemplates and webtemplatequery to backup your entire webtemplate/webquery data. This is one of the nice feature of the hack, you back up your vb and your entire site is backed up..

However I also added a new feature to the new version: You can export your webtemplates/webqueries as a text file. I integrated this feature so that hack users can easily share their useful webtemplates/webqueries, but it's also useful for archiving purposes (I'll send you the new version ASAP, you can test the feature)

Yeah, header and footer are not designed to be parsed. Because I dont want to increase PHP script running time with all these features, however it can be achievable with one line of code if that is what you want.

Can be possible with hacking but would be a hard job. VB's searching design is quite complicated and you may need to commit too much time to first solve the system, then integrate this feature.

An easier method would be to create a webquery that makes searches in your webtemplates. In the new version webqueries work with ourside variables so you can design such a powerful webquery which accepts user data and searches webtemplates according to this keyword. However please notice that some of your templates may have conditionals (eg. hidden text for certain users) or may be private (open to some users only) and if you search keywords in your entire webtemplate db, these info may be exposed..

Ah, sorry - should have checked there! Thanks! Yes, that is also one of the reasons why your script interests me so much - at the moment I have a fairly static site but updating and backing up is a bit of a hassle. So far, WebTemplates seems to be much easier, apart from the ability to include other templates as I mentioned earlier.

No, it's fine as it is thanks. I don't want anything that is unecessarily going to increase server load.


That's exactly what I want! But I have no idea how to create it!

Please consult to the help page section related "outside variables". You can use the info there. To recap:

You first need to create an HTML form (in a static HTML page or in a webtemplate, your call) and put a input text box there to let your users enter the keyword to search. Then create another webtemplate and make sure the form POSTs the form data to that second webtemplate. To that second webtemplate, attach a webquery which takes the user keyword and by using it searches the relevant field of "webtemplates" table and sorts the found results. Then by clicking the sorted results user can visit the webtemplates which has these keywords.

I again want remind you that if you have "private webtemplates" or "private sections in public webtemplates" these can be exposed unless you exclude these webtemplates in your webquery.

If you are not familiar with the tecnical concepts I mentioned here or cant manage to do your searching feature yourself, remind me your request after I released the new version and I can give you the webtemplate/webquery that does it.

@To other users of webtemplates hack: The feature (ie "outside variables") I quote in this message, is not included in the webtemplates version (beta) you are using at the moment. This feature is included in the new version of webtemplates and although it's not yet released, grb123 is beta testing it.

Thanks Logician. I may have to get the search query from you as I don't trust myself! I've upgraded to the new Beta and it's all ok so far. I'll PM you some suggestions when I've played with it for a couple of days.

Logician, please reply me :)
I can create main homepage with news (from first forum), poll (from second forum), login panel, information about PM and small help for newbie - By means of it hack?

Yes, you could but you would probably be better off using vBHome or vBPortal which would be easier for your purposes. Do a search here to find those two hacks.

How to make, that at enter on MY_FORUM_URL user saw one of web templates? And how in web template to insert contents of another web template?

don't work Advanced Page Design
[[ ($user_usergroupid==6) ]] (without spaces)
I see
[[ (6==6) ]] (without spaces)
Help me, please

inetd,
As grb123 suggested, I think you should use other hacks if you intend to apply it to your main page. Well some of your your requests can be done via Webtemplates too, but if you are designing a "dynamic home page", you can do it more easily with other hacks.

However you can use webtemplates to design other pages (non main page) of your site with efficiency. So for example if you have a page which you want to display to only usergroup X, registered members, user with more than Y posts or user older than X days you can use webtemplates..

Your syntax is wrong.. You should use this format:
This conditional will show the text "I see" only if the page visitor is from Site Admins group. I guess this is what you wanted to achieve..

Please read a few messages above for more info about this subject..

Logician, i see vBindex, vbHome(Lite) and vbPortal. But i don't want make many changes in my vB :)
You can quote these messages? Please :)
And say please, how to make, that at enter on MY_FORUM_URL user saw one of web templates?

here you go: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...481#post273481

You have 2 options to make a webtemplate your main page:

1- You can edit your .htaccess file and make a redirection so that whenever your main page (=index.htm or index.html) is called, server opens your webtemplate. A sample redirection line is that:

Redirect /index.html http://www.yoururl.com/forum/show.php?pg=your_template

Please search keywords ".htaccess+redirect" for more info about .htaccess redirection

2- You can assign your homepage as "index.php" instead of index.html (this can require .htaccess editing either), then inside this file you can "include" your webtemplate. So whenever index.php is called, your webtemplate will be displayed.

To include your webtemplate inside your index.php you need to use this line in the begining of index.php:

<?php include ("http://www.yourdomain.com/forum/show.php?pg=your_template"); ?>

Choose either way and you can make your webtemplate your site's main page..


However I want to mention again that, this hack is not meant to be "site main page" alternative..

Logician,

Thanks for this great hack. It has given me so many idea's.

It is working on www.gamblingforums.net (except i cannot get my referrals working)

Logician, you the best vBhacker! Sorry for my bad English also there can be a dullness, I am simple very badly I understand in mySQL and PHP. Thank you huge!