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 \\=^))

[AndrewD]

Sorry to tell you this...

There is an obscure bug when this hack is installed, a user forgets his password and he requests a new one. One ends up with a PHP parse error.

The bug is as follows:

VBulletin uses $a as a global variable in the reset password code (around line 174 of member.php). This messes up use of $a as the command argument in advanced_templates.

Solution: use a variable in advanced_templates which does not have global scope. (e.g. replace $a by $basictemplate)

[Logician]

Originally posted by AndrewD
There is an obscure bug when this hack is installed, a user forgets his password and he requests a new one. One ends up with a PHP parse error.

Andrew, I have already noticed that bug, released an update and sent it to hack users via email (for ones who clicked "install" in the hack thread) in September 9th. I put the bug notice and fix into thread's first message and the hack instruction has also been corrected..

Since you wisely noticed the bug and its cause, I'm sure you already fixed it in your board but if you didnt, you can get the updated file and correct the problem..

Thx for the feedback though..

[AndrewD]

You're too quick for me, Logician - or rather I'm too slow and bleary eyed by this time of day

Have now clicked on install, so that you can duly tell me the next wonderful things you achieve

[trainer]

i am seeing

[[(6==6)]]

Advanced Templates Hack has been successfully installed! By the way this remark is visible to Site Admins only.. Enjoy..
Logician \\=^))

[[/(6==6)]]


in the index.php page. how do i get rid of the [[(6==6)]] and [[/(6==6)]]

so i will only see the message?

just checked and seeing

[[(2==6)]]

Advanced Templates Hack has been successfully installed! By the way this remark is visible to Site Admins only.. Enjoy..
Logician \\=^))

[[/(2==6)]]


in the index.php page. how do i get rid of the [[(6==6)]] and [[/(6==6)]]


anyone else having this problem?

[Freddie Bingham]

Originally posted by fastforward

Great hack Logician, but Ed was inspired way before March 2002 :
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...t=conditionals

Like I said though, great hack and thanks... I'll be using it.

Yes conditionals were one of the first things to go into vb3 and that was before March 2002.

As for technical details:

1. You can do if/else constructs
2. The conditionals are parsed at the time you edit your templates since we now store two copies of every template. One with the conditionals asis, and one with any conditionals converted to accompanying php code so that there is no overhead when the templates are called by the forum.

[Logician]

Originally posted by trainer
how do i get rid of the [[(6==6)]] and [[/(6==6)]] so i will only see the message?

Trainer please login to your Admin CP, choose vb settings and disable "Add template name in comments".. This should fix your problem.. If this fixes the problem and you are determined to keep this option enabled, AndrewD posted the code to apply in this thread a few post above, please apply this one.. But IMO there is no need have this settings on all the time..

[Logician]

Originally posted by freddie
Yes conditionals were one of the first things to go into vb3 and that was before March 2002.

Great.. Although this is usually for power users, I believe conditionals add a lot of functionality to the board, so it's a very valuable addition to the script.. I'm using the concept since my webtemplates hack and didnt know you intented to add it to vb 3 and I'm very glad you did..

2. The conditionals are parsed at the time you edit your templates since we now store two copies of every template. One with the conditionals asis, and one with any conditionals converted to accompanying php code so that there is no overhead when the templates are called by the forum.

I dont exactly understand what kind of algorithm you are following but if I'm not wrong, it will be much different than my approach. I parse them on the fly and I accept that this can add a small (IMO bearable) overhead to running time, but I believe it's the only way to code it, if functionality is the primary concern. This helps to have more than 1 conditionals in every template and also allow any variable to be used as a conditional.

Of course I'm sure you have a nice algorithm either..

[Xenon]

perhaps you've read that already, but if not:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...3&pagenumber=2

[Logician]

Originally posted by Xenon
perhaps you've read that already, but if not:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...3&pagenumber=2

thx for the link Pal, but that explanation is still unclear to me.. The only educated guess I can make from that statement is that vb3 will save the conditionals seperate from the template itself so that they could be eval'ed without need to parse through the template but it's still not clear to me how this would increase the template parsing time.. If a condition is met, there will be still a replacement (= parsing) in template. The only gain would be while searching through the template if it has a conditional or not but well considering the templates sizes are not so big, IMO its overhead increase should be very trivial..

It's just a "substr_count" that's saved (which I intend to add to my hack too) but IMO it does not effect running time so significiantly..

Or I still didnt get how it will work? lol

[trainer]

what is this like on server load? it seems to be pretty hard on my site. any ideas?