Well, Lynne, I want to thank you very much for the article; I've used it with success here @work (up to a point), but I'm very sorry I have to chime in with YAQ (Yet another question).
On our sites, I can't seem to get the site footer to work.
Here's the relevant section of my PHP script:
PHP Code:
$navbits = construct_navbits($navbits);
$navbar = render_navbar_template($navbits);
//$templater = vB_Template::create('footer');
//if (!is_object($templater)) { die("template not object!"); }
//$footer = $templater->render();
//if (!is_object($footer)) { die("footer not object!"); }
$templater = vB_Template::create('pfs');
$templater->register_page_templates();
$templater->register('navbar', $navbar);
$templater->register('checked', $checked);
// $templater->register('footer',$footer);
print_output($templater->render());
You can see I've been fudging around trying to figure this out. I even read about 24 pages of this thread before giving in to the temptation to bug you about it.

Not that's that would be any consolation for you, I'm afraid.
I suppose what's really confusing is that the $templater object does contain the footer code as it's supposed to. So is this some sort of rendering issue? It doesn't appear in the HTML source code of the resulting page --- no footer HTML in there at all.
Here's the 'pfs' template code:
Code:
{vb:stylevar htmldoctype}
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"<vb:if condition="$vboptions['enablefacebookconnect']"> xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"</vb:if> dir="{vb:stylevar textdirection}" lang="{vb:stylevar languagecode}">
<head>
{vb:raw headinclude}
<title>My Page Title</title>
{vb:cssfile faq.css}
{vb:raw headinclude_bottom}
</head>
<body>
{vb:raw header}
{vb:raw navbar}
<div id="pagetitle">
<h1 style="font-family:sans-serif,arial;text-align:center;margin-bottom:25px;margin-top:20px;font-size:20px;background:#448ccb;width:960px;color:white;font-weight:bold;">A Big Header</h1>
</div>
<iframe style="border:0px;margin-left:100px;" src="http://somesite.com/myscript.php" width="760" height="1600" scrolling="no"></iframe>
<!-- FOOTER TEMPLATE IS INCLUDED BELOW THIS LINE -->
<vb:raw footer>
</body>
</html>
I can comment out the IFrame, but it doesn't seem to matter; the footer's not output/shown regardless. I do see the closing /BODY and /HTML tags.
I you don't mind to help me close this bug, I'd be quite appreciative.

Whacks w/the clue stick are appreciated as well