[Varsh]

That's exactly what I did funnily enough, the custom template looks like this:

<ul id="topMenu">
	<li><a href="http://www.nexusrealms.co.uk">Home</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://media.nexusrealms.co.uk">Media Projects</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://forums.nexusrealms.co.uk/project.php">Projects Tools</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://forums.nexusrealms.co.uk">Forums</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://forums.nexusrealms.co.uk/faq.php">FAQs</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://wiki.nexusrealms.co.uk">Wiki</a></li>
</ul>
<if condition="$show['member']">
<ul class="topMenu2 blue">
	<li><a href="http://forums.nexusrealms.co.uk/usercp.php">Control Panel</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://forums.nexusrealms.co.uk/search.php?$session[sessionurl]do=finduser&amp;u=$bbuserinfo[userid]">My Posts</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://forums.nexusrealms.co.uk/search.php?do=getnew">New Posts</a></li>
	<if condition="$vboptions['enablememberlist']">
		<li><a href="http://forums.nexusrealms.co.uk/memberlist.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[members_list]</a></li>
	</if>
	<if condition="$show['member']">
		<li><a href="login.php?$session[sessionurl]do=logout&amp;logouthash=$bbuserinfo[logouthash]" onclick="return log_out('$vbphrase[sure_you_want_to_log_out]')">$vbphrase[log_out]</a></li>
	</if>
	<if condition="$show['admincplink']"><li><a href="$admincpdir/index.php$session[sessionurl_q]">$vbphrase[admin]</a></li></if>
</ul>
</if>

And the plugins look like this:
global_start

eval('$nxr_topMenu = "' . fetch_template('nxr_topMenu') . '";');

cache_templates

$globaltemplates = array_merge($globaltemplates, array('nxr_topMenu'));

I would've used

globaltemplates[] = 'nxr_topMenu';

if I didn't get an error.