[kh99]

I don't know why that doesn't work. But I have an alternative suggestion: create a plugin (always active) using hook init_startup with code:

$datastore_fetch[]="'closemessage'";

(all those quotes need to be there).

Then in your template use something like:

<if condition="$vbulletin->closemessage">
<center><font color=\"yellow\"><font size=\"+1\"><b>$vbulletin->closemessage</b></font></center>";  
</if>

Then have your command line program write to the datastore table with title = "closemessage" and data = your message (I'm not sure if the message string needs to be serialized or not, so you'd either need to call serialize on it and write the resulting string to the db and set the unserialize field to 1, or not. I don't think it hurts to just do that even if it's not necessary).

To turn off the message you could either delete the record or set the message to a null string.

I haven't tried this myself but it seems like it should work, and I think it's less complicated than rebuilding the plugin datastore.

ETA: another idea would be to add a setting under vBulletin options (which you can do when the site is in debug mode), then figure out where to change the value in the database. That would have the advantage of letting you also set it from the acp if you wanted.