[Dr.CustUmz]

...your on to something, my master template dump was from an earlier version. Although I am running 3.8.11, i will see if this snippet is still in the template manager.

**edit** just confirmed this snippet is in 3.8.11. no change to the template at all.

keep in mind I am looking at this source on forumdisplay (i am unaware anywhere else that uses threadbit_announcement)

Attachment 157643

I have tried only having 1 announcement, 1 announcement and a global. only 2 forum announcements, only 2 global announcements, all stacked announcements, and all un stacked, and a few other ways. nothing seems to give these variables values. at this point its just bugging the hell out of me.

is there maybe somewhere else this template is rendered? I searched all templates, and see $announcebits is called in the announcements and search templates also, but I cant figure out how to search for announcements and I defiantly dont see this template being used in the announcement template