Where is the code that determines where the template will be used if a particular styleset does not have a template associated with it? I would like it so that the logic worked like this, i have 2 style sets.

If using style set A

if template - use it
if not template (ie not a custom one in styleset A) then use the default template that comes with VB.

If using style set B

if template use it
if no template, then use the template in style set A. If no template in styleset A then use default template.

See what i mean? This means that for template sets which only have a different header, footer and something else, i do not have to keep up to date every other single template from my default one.

any ideas?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but do you mean you wanna implement multi-level inheritence?

yes that is exactly what i want.

Could be implemented, but probably will add alot of mysql-queries.

The problem is you can't predict which templates you have to select from the database on forehand. Mysql doesn't support recursive queries so you'd have to get a workaround on it which will add more queries.

how does it do it now? if there is no template in a specific style? does it then go off and get the template from another style?

i thought an if elseif routine would just add 1 extra query per page which i can cope with but perhaps it is more than that. annoying.

right now 2 template-sets are selected on forehand: The default template set (with default I mean the one you can't edit, the one with id -1) and the users template-set.

If a template from the users-set doesn't exists he gets the one from the default set.

For my purpose the system would always be

Default -> A -> B/C/D/E/F

as A is my "default" set.

So i guess my options are:

i) using phpmyadmin (or i think there is a variable that allows you to override deleting the real default set, there was with the beta anyway) and over ride the actual default set with my set A templates. Problem is of course upgrading when template changes are made.

ii) somehow load 3 template sets instead of 2 and then change the bit that goes if x, use x elseif use x from template -1.

any idea where these bits of code are? i assume global.php - of to look.

With your solution you'll limit it to a certain level. The best solution would be to have no limit at all, so you can inherit many levels deep. I thought about it and I think it can be implemented without adding extra queries, but I haven't really figured out how.

The particular code is the cachetemplates function in admin/functions.php

i think this is the section:

how does this OR thing work

(templatesetid=-1 OR templatesetid='$templatesetid'))

does that mean, find a specific template where templatesetid=x as well as where templatesetid=-1? so both are returned. By ordering by templatesetid, the ones with a real template setid come up first?

any ideas what would happen if i just did

(templatesetid=-1 OR templatesetid='$templatesetid' OR tempatesetid='10'))

? if i ensure that all my other template sets have a higher number than 10? (or perhaps a lower number if that is what is needed)?

That probably would work, only you have to change it to:

(templatesetid=-1 OR tempatesetid='10' OR templatesetid='$templatesetid'))

In that particular order, in order to let the inheritance happen in the right order (lot of orders)

but I'm not 100% sure. There is another disadvantage: The result of the query can be far more bigger now, resulting in a slight(?) slowdown...