[Kirk Y]

Your 'newbie template' should just have whatever html you'd like to add. The string used in the plugin is a sort of locator, whatever you've got in the template is added beneath the string, it doesn't replace it -- so you can just put in the "Invisible Users: bla" stuff.

You don't need to declare your template in the plugin code, just put its name in the plugin used to find the string.

I'd just use forumhome_complete for the plugin, that's what works for me, but feel free to try different hooks. But since you've mentioned caching templates, I just remembered that you'll want to do just that to avoid additional queries. Try this code in a plugin using hook 'cache_templates':

if (THIS_SCRIPT == 'index'){
	$globaltemplates  = array_merge($globaltemplates, array('silly_newbie_template'));
}

To be honest, in all my hacks, I've never specified an executionorder for my plugins. I'm not entirely up to specs when it comes to plugin settings like that, but I've never seen any problems in relation to it.

I'd say you're getting close -- this is how we learn, heck this is how I learned, just posting a lot of threads in the Programming forum.