[kh99]

When you're rendering your template, register the notification variables to your template, like:

$templater->register('notifications_menubits', $notifications_menubits);
$templater->register('notifications_total', $notifications_total);

Then look at the original navbar template and copy the parts that display notifications_menubits and notifications_total (unless that's the part you were asking about, in which case this doesn't help ).