[Logician]

These are PHP codes, you can not put them directly inside templates unless you dont want them to be displayed as a code. To parse them you have to put them in .php files. Since you are trying to use them inside header/footer, you may try to put them in global.php for instance. Assign their values in the file, then use the variable in your template.

eg. in global.php use:
$users_date=vbdate("h:i",time());

Then in footer use
$users_date

You can also put them into phpinclude template, it's a template which is parsed..