[kh99]

Originally Posted by MikeF

I've been driven nuts. All I want to do is output $random_number using rand(1,99999) and I'm stuck.. why have they made this insanely difficult?

It actually does make sense, although I'll admit it's not obvious why. What have you tried? You should be able to do something like in a plugin:

$random_number = rand(1,99999);
vB_Template::preRegister('template_name',array('random_number' => $random_number));

hook location parse_templates is probably a good choice. Of course you need to change template_name to the actual name of the template you want to use the random number in.

Then in the template put

{vb:raw random_number}