Advanced Templates: Dynamic Templates Changing according to different conditions

This hack allows you to design dynamic vb templates which change themselves according to different conditions. Thus you can customize your board very powerfully with "intelligent/interactive" templates. It uses the same "conditional concept" just like my Webtemplates and Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack. With conditionals you can program your templates to:

• be displayed differently to different users.
• hide/display some part/texts/html codes/even the entire template for some users
• include extra text/HTML codes/secret messages inside which will be displayed if page visitor matches your pre-configured criterias
• Have multi-templates inside 1 template and each of them will be parsed and displayed only if their set condition applies.

You can program your templates according to many different criteria, such as:

• user's userid
• user's usergroup
• user's profile fields' input
• user's post number
• user's last visit time
• user's seniority (register date)
• today's date, day, month, week, year, hour, second, if today is user's birthday
• user's is visibility status
• style id user's using
• user's cookie status
• user's time settings
• (in forumdisplay templates) forum id
• (in showthread templates) thread id
• etc.

Some practical examples about what you can do with this hack:

• You can have different postbit templates for different users/usergroups.
• Display your board differently to the user if it's his birthday, if he is X, if he age <Y, if he didnt visit your board since Z etc.
• Display Admin Only Profile fields/or any profile fields in postbit if X condition applies
• You can hide Admin only links in your templates such as "Show IP".
• Disable Email/Pm User links in postbit or userprofile screen if reader is from usergroup X etc.
• Send different email text to different users according to different criteria. Add hidden email texts if X condition applies
• Hide "register" link if user is not a guest, add access to pm if user is not a guest
• Ban some templates if X condition applies such as dont display profile screens if user's X profile field = Y
• Disable some forums if today is X day or hour is Y
• Dont display thread view/user count/last reply date if user's usergroup is X
• Hide threads according to different criteria in showthread templates

Well there are literally millions of possibilities you can apply, so please use your imagination for more examples..

The Hack's Features:

• Installation is VERY easy: Actually 2 steps in 1 file will take less than 1 minute..You will be surprised how such a small modification will make such a big difference in your board.
• It's compatible with ALL vb versions I know
• The hack covers all the templates in your database: ie. custom templates, ALL vbulletin templates including even emails and error messages etc.
• It's fully compatible with all your installed hacks and their custom templates too.
• It makes many small hacks obsolete because you can now modify your templates to achieve the same result instead of hacking your board (=changing .php files)

Vbulletin v.3 has been announced to have "conditional" concept in templates, however my hack wasn't inspired by it at all, because I'm using the conditionals in my Webtemplates hack since March 2002 so in fact vb developers might be inspired by me. My Dynamic Forum Announcements hack uses the same concept for forum home announcements too.. (Wait for my other hacks depending on conditionals cause I really like them, they are really powerful and customizable)

Performance Issues
The hack does NOT add any MYSQL connections. It just process your already retrieved templates in a function to parse the hack conditionals. Thus the performance is IMO quite bearable. However please notice that if a template has a conditional in it, the hack have to parse it before displaying it and technically this parsing is done with PHP's preg_match command which is known as a powerful but slow command. So does it cause any performance problems? In most cases no. But if the conditionals are applied in a very frequently used and/or long template and/or you used too many conditionals in one template AND your traffic or server load is high, this MAY increase your PHP processing time whenever this template is displayed as the hack has to deal with the conditionals everytime this template is called. I suggest applying Teck's Microstat's hack and observe the PHP running time with that hack after you applied a conditional especially in a frequently used template (eg. postbit). If it slows down the display, simply reduce your conditional count in that template or delete the conditional or remove the hack altogether. Personally I dont have any performance problems in my own board related to this hack but just wanted to give my 2 cents anyway especially for high-traffic boards..

If you liked the hack (I guess you will), I strongly suggest checking out my Webtemplates hack which provides exactly the same feature for your NON-VB pages.

Also please click INSTALL if you use the hack, thank you..

09.Sep.2002 Bug Fix: If you installed the hack before 09.Sep.2002 please download the instructions again and reapply step 2, since I made an update for a small bug fix. There was a variable name collision which causes a problem with email validation screen which uses the same variable so I changed my variable's name. If you are downloading the hack now, go ahead.. The code you download is already fixed..
07.Oct.2002 UPDATE: I updated the hack code, so that people who have enabled template debugging in their Admin CP/vb Settings can also use the hack. Also small modification applied to increase template parsing time. If you installed the hack before my update, you may choose to reinstall (not necessary). If you are a new hack user, the instructions you download is already new version's.

Enjoy!
Logician \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally posted by Karmulian
when i removed (quoted out) the announcements funtion in /admin/functions.php the errors stopped

what announcement function? Do you mean this hack or Dynamic Announcement's hack?

[Sadie Frost]

Would there be a way to use this to make a forum appear in a different style for different users?

[Logician]

Originally posted by Sadie Frost
Would there be a way to use this to make a forum appear in a different style for different users?

Although the answer is yes, it would be easier to handle this with an other small hack so I'll give you this solution instead of this hack's solution:

Edit global.php, find:

PHP Code:

 $getforum=verifyid('forum',$forumid,0,1);
if ($getforum['styleoverride']==1 or $bbuserinfo['styleid']<2) {
    $codestyleid=$getforum['styleid'];
  } 


After that add:
(If you want to apply different style set for specific user)

PHP Code:

if ($bbuserinfo['userid']==X AND $forumid==Z) {$codestyleid=Y;} 


(If you want to apply different style set for specific usergroup)

PHP Code:

if ($bbuserinfo['usergroupid']==X AND $forumid==Z) {$codestyleid=Y;} 


Replace X with userid (first code), usergroupid(secondcode) while you replace Y with your style id and Z with the forumid.

It works like this: If user is X and he visited forum Z, his style will change to Y

[Boofo]

Sinan, is there a way to only have the "Edit Post" button appear to those who "candeleteposts" with this hacK? I have been working on this for 2 days now trying to figure out the right variable to work with this. Can it be done or am I missing something? If not with this hack, is there a way this can be done another way? Great hack, buddy!

[Logician]

Originally posted by Boofo
Sinan, is there a way to only have the "Edit Post" button appear to those who "candeleteposts" with this hacK? I have been working on this for 2 days now trying to figure out the right variable to work with this. Can it be done or am I missing something? If not with this hack, is there a way this can be done another way? Great hack, buddy!

This should work:
Edit postbit template, find:

PHP Code:

            <a href="editpost.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=editpost&postid=$post[postid]"><img src="{imagesfolder}/edit.gif" border="0" alt="Edit/Delete Message"></a> 


Replace it as:

PHP Code:

[[($post[userid]==$bbuserinfo[userid] or ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="5" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="6" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="7"))]]
            <a href="editpost.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=editpost&postid=$post[postid]"><img src="{imagesfolder}/edit.gif" border="0" alt="Edit/Delete Message"></a>
[[/($post[userid]==$bbuserinfo[userid] or ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="5" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="6" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="7"))]] 


[a43079]

noce hack

[Boofo]

Thanks, Sinan. I have a hack that does that already. What i am looking for is to have it not show up to anyone besides the admin and Supermod unless they are either the poster of the message or a mod that has edit rights to that message. Not all of my mods can edit messages everywhere on the board. I tried the ismoderator variable and it didn't work. Is there another way around this?

I think I will take the hack out and replace it with your code.

Originally posted by Logician

This should work:
Edit postbit template, find:

PHP Code:

            <a href="editpost.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=editpost&postid=$post[postid]"><img src="https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/images/edit.gif" border="0" alt="Edit/Delete Message"></a> 


Replace it as:

PHP Code:

[[($post[userid]==$bbuserinfo[userid] or ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="5" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="6" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="7"))]]
            <a href="editpost.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&action=editpost&postid=$post[postid]"><img src="https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/images/edit.gif" border="0" alt="Edit/Delete Message"></a>
[[/($post[userid]==$bbuserinfo[userid] or ($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="5" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="6" or $bbuserinfo[usergroupid]=="7"))]] 


[Sadie Frost]

Thank you Logician

[Martin CX]

This is an extremely fine hack.

Is there some "CanPostReply" variable, I can use to hide the "quote" and "post reply"-buttons if a user isn't allowed to post in a thread (either because it is locked, oe because of their user group).

[Highlander]

i just used your similar hacks in march 2002 .. and it was very great.... i might install this also !..

great work.. the should make you to be one of the master VB code designers !