Template Backup System!

Hi everyone.

Here's my newest hack, called Template Backup System (TBS).
This is a very powerful tool for backing up and restoring your templates, especially good for upgrades.

I know you can do this using vBulletin's buil in style manager, but the beauty in this hack is that it exports only templates, and further more - they are saved to individual files in a folder you choose.

Why you ask? This could help a lot when upgrading to a new version of vBulletin. Just like you can compare files using programs such as Araxis Merge or Beyone Compare, you can now also compare templates, and easily keep track of changes that were done between versions.
After you save all changes to the template files, you use this script again only this time in the opposite directions - restoring the templates back into the system.

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This hack was in testing process for quite some time now, over a week and a half actually.
It has been tested extensively by the magnificent Hooper, and I truly believe it's 99% bug-free.
Most of the features in the hack are actually his ideas, so thanks a lot Rick!

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Before I continue, I need to say the expanding / collapsing feature will only work on Internet Explorer. It was only tested on it really, but I think the style.display thing is only supported by it.

Anyway, let's install this baby.

First of all, we need to edit admin/index.php a little bit.
Find this:

makenavoption("Add Template Set","template.php?action=addset");

and replace it with this:

[high]makenavoption("Add Template Set","template.php?action=addset","<br>");
makenavoption("Template Backup System","tbs.php?action=modify");[/high]

Save admin/index.php and upload back to your server.

Now edit cp.css (in the main forums folder). Now here's a file you don't edit often, huh?
Find this:

.cc { /* custom color */
	COLOR: darkblue;
}

and add this right after it:

[high].rc { /* custom color */
	COLOR: darkred;
} [/high]

Save cp.css and upload back to your server.

And last but not least, download tbs.php (attached to this post) and upload to your admin folder on your server.

That's it, installation is done.

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A few notes.

You can add new groups for template listing by editing tbs.php.
At the top, you will see something like this:

$groups['calendar']='Calendar';
$groups['emailsubject']='Email Subject';

and much more. To add your own group, simply add this:

$groups['[high]template_identifier[/high]']='[high]Group Name[/high]';

[high]template_identifier[/high] is the beginning of each template in this group, and [high]Group Name[/high] is the name of this group.

When saying "Using this requires a minimum amount of RAM." I am not kidding. If you don't have enough memory your browser will simply crash when clicking the Check All box. Trust me.

Make sure the folder you are saving templates into is CHMODed 0777, or PHP will not be able to create files in it. Also, the folder is a relative path to the admin folder, not the forums folder!

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That's all I have to say.
Feedback and feature requests are welcomed as always!

Have fun!

[Hooper]

There is nothing wrong with having the folder in the Admin. Then when you try to backup be sure not to put /admin/templates for the path. Try just /templates. See if that works.

I have 2 backup folders in my admin and it works flawlessly.

Rick

[Lucky]

Well I still can not get this going.

I have a folder in forums called templates.
I also have a folder in forums/admin called templates.

I had the server change to 777 on nt.

I am running 2.2.1

I am lost as to why it will not write to one of those folders.
I have it setup to go to templates in admincp.

Any more ideas as to how to correct the problem I am having?

[Lucky]

Okay,

I got it.

It was the server at fault as the permissions had to be changed.

Great Hack Firefly old buddy old pal!

[Hooper]

You're welcome lucky. Glad it's working for you.

[WildWayz]

Oh my god!

This is fantastic!

Can it be hacked to create a new dir with 777 permissions in a templates folder?

So then we can just specify
templates/newfoldername
and if it doesn't exist and 'templates' is 777, it will create it

Failing that, how about being able to prefix the export like
07012001_filename.html

Nice tho

--James

[Admin]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by WildWayz
Can it be hacked to create a new dir with 777 permissions in a templates folder?

So then we can just specify
templates/newfoldername
and if it doesn't exist and 'templates' is 777, it will create it

Failing that, how about being able to prefix the export like
07012001_filename.html

[WildWayz]

oh my!

You are a star

--James

[Admin]

BTW this is not tested, which is why I attached it to the last post.
Let me know if it works, will ya? Thanks.

[inetd]

Excuse for a silly question but how to use this hack? Admit I has made upgrade vB. How to me to compare former and present templates? Or I have not understood something?

[samtha25]

Am I understanding this correctly? Would this hack let me export templates to individual files, download the files for editing, upload the edited templates to an import directory, and then import the edited templates without having to go through the dreaded copy-paste routine?

If so, I may shoot myself.