WebTemplates v.0.1 (Old Version)

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Attention: This version of webtemplates is obsolete since new version (2.xx) is released as of 30.June.2003.

If you are new user, please visit new hack's thread and install that one, not this version.

This thread is active for discussing migration issues and will be closed in the future.
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Introduction:
Basically this hack allows you create vbulletin powered non-vb pages within vb admin CP and administer them just like vb templates.

Your "webtemplates" reside inside MYSQL and have the same structure as regular vbulletin templates and you edit/modify/delete them inside your Admin CP. You can create as many as you like and display them like:
http://yoursite URL/yourboard URL/show.php?pg=YOUR_WEBTEMPLATE_NAME.

Features of Your WebTemplates:
* You can easily edit/update your non-vb pages from your vb control panel just like vb templates. No need to FTP or smt.
* Simply backup your vbulletin and your entire site (including your webtemplates) is backed up too.
* You can use some vbulletin variables in your non-vb pages, so eg. address your members with their member names in your entire site.
* Your entire web site can mimic your forum's visual interface. All your fonts/colors etc. are kept in your non-vb. pages too. Besides users' style sets apply for your web templates either. So for instance if you have 2 styles, every user will see your webtemplates in the style and colors they are using in the board.
* This hack allows you to specify usergroups/usernames which can or cannot see the page you designed. So your non-vb pages can inherit vb. access permissions. Every webtemplate can have different display permissions for different users/usergroups.
* You can have counters in your pages and show/trace page visits individually for all your pages. Every webtemplate has its own counter.
* You can have "last visitor's name and visit time" in all your pages.
* You can insert fixed header/footer for all your pages.
* The "conditionals" you can set, allow you to design advanced and dynamic web pages, which change themselves according to the conditions you set. For example you can set different texts/page designs IN THE SAME PAGE for different users and every user will only see the text that is addressed to him.

Webtemplates are very easy to create. Just copy paste the HTML code of your page into the webtemplate box, give it a name, click submit and voila, your webtemplate is up and running! By using this method, you can convert your existing non-vb pages into webtemplates with ease too. It is just a matter of copy/paste its HMTML code. Installation of the hack is easy too and the hack will work any version of vbulletin I know.

For Advanced Users: If you want your webtemplates to get data from your database and display it, you have an advanced feature named "webqueries". WebQueries feature allows you to run SQL queries in your MYSQL database and automatically create sorted tables for you which you can add in any WebTemplates. So your non-vb pages can be dynamic and you can have any kind of SQL results (related with vb or not) in any page you want. Webqueries are optional to use and appeals to people with basic SQL knowledge. You can still create webtemplates very easily without using webqueries if you don't know SQL or don't need to query your database in your webtemplate. If you want to play with webqueries, please read and follow instructions CAREFULLY. This hack gives you advanced tools to create powerful and dynamic web pages, so give yourself sometime and learn how to create these pages. I wrote help pages which you can find in your webtemplates section after installation, so please read them carefully and examine sample page's code before pelting me with questions!

If you installed this hack, share your webquery samples in this thread


Fixes and Add-ons:
* If you have than 1 MYSQL databases, webquery section might not work properly. If you encounter any problems related to that issue, apply the small fix in this post.[/COLOR]
* If you want to display your webtemplates in who is online, apply this small hack .
Also there is a small bug with "conditionals" feature of the hack, if you use more than 1 conditional in 1 webtemplate. I guess very few people use this feature but anyway I fixed it in the new release that is in progress..
* If you want your webtemplates search engine friendly and indexed in google or other search engines, read this tip by Piper.

Current version (BETA v.0.1) is NOT actually a beta anymore, it's proven to be working very well in many people's boards and is stable.

I plan to develop this hack. However to enhance it more, I need to change its algortihm which requires rewriting and I wait for VB3 so that the hack will will be competible with VB3 too. That's why development is pending at the moment.


If you install the hack please click install, thank you.

Regards,
Logician //=^))

[Aerith_Freak]

Ah yes I get your drift now.

[Rose]

Originally posted by Logician
I must admit that I'm impressed.. I have seen many sites fully powered with webtemplates, but your site also designed nicely..Who ever did it, congrats, nice job

:$ Thanks. It's my first attempt. Glad to see I'm doing somethign right. *hehe*

There is no limit. You can use as many as you like.
Sorry.. To achieve this I need to modify existing webtemplate table and this would cause incompetability with the existing version so I dont plan to do it. My suggestion maybe to use similiar names for similiar webtemplates. For example if you name them:
Gallery1_templatexxx
Gallery1_templateyyy
Gallery1_templatezzz
all gallery1 templates will be listed newt to each other and you can track tham easily

*nods* This is what I figured. I'm naming the templates rather nicely so it's not too hard to find them (such as what you have listed above). Just thought I'd try.

There is a high demand for this feature but it really effects hack's performance badly by slowing the parsing and increasing loading time. So I cant promise for that feature.. Let's see what will happen in the next release..

Ah, if you do you do and if not I'm sure we'll survive.

[Tim Wheatley]

Hm I've just read every post and I've decided to have a go at this. I've been running cgi/shtml on my website because I used to use UBB and found perl easy to understand. I feel 'sort of' okay with sql now and I'm going to give this a go.

Thanks for the hack and for the opportunity to do this, I'll let you know how it goes...

[Tim Wheatley]

I have one question for anyone really...

How do you move a template into a template category or create a category.

I have a lot of templates called forumhome_xxxxxxxx and I'm like to move them for sorting out into the forum homepage display category... I've had it done before by a file I downloaded doing it automatically with a template - but how do I do it manually? Sql table editing?

[Logician]

Originally posted by Tim Wheatley
How do you move a template into a template category or create a category.

Do you mean webtemplates created with this hack or default vb templates?

[FASherman]

Just installed this hack. Went to view the help pages and got:

"The page you requested does not exist!

Please check the address you want to visit. If you arrived this page by clicking a link inside this site, you may notify the Site Administrator about the broken link. Thank you!"

Clearly I did something wrong. Any idea?

[FASherman]

Nevermind. The installdoc gave the help pages as starting with a cap. The engineer in my always wants to read docs for diving in.

Nice work. You've designed a single parsing engine to resolve a stored procedure language to the refrecned data and to recognize and substitute for vb variables. If you ever need a new name for this, try vbWarmFusion.

[Logician]

Originally posted by FASherman
Nice work. You've designed a single parsing engine to resolve a stored procedure language to the refrecned data and to recognize and substitute for vb variables. If you ever need a new name for this, try vbWarmFusion.

You are right..

If I would recoded it today, I would name it something like vbCodingLanguage or smt. because it is really a kind of simple vb coding languge. I didnt realize the fact in the day I named the hack

Anyway new version is much powerful regarding this feature of the hack and I'm coding it mostly around this point. It will be possible to write independent vb structures/applications with this hack without even changing a single line of vb code or writing an independent .php script, all within webtemplates and webqueries.

Too bad many users of the hack havent ever realized this most powerful feature of the hack and they only use it as a basic vb-membership check for non-vb pages..

[FASherman]

I easily see the benefit of being able to present a page with dynamic, up-to-the-minute data, mining the DB for personalization characteristics.

Now, I've only begun to tinker, but it seems like the $user[fieldname] replacement doesn't work in my webtemplates. Making the rational assumption that I have done something wrong, any idea what it might be?

[Logician]

Originally posted by FASherman
Now, I've only begun to tinker, but it seems like the $user[fieldname] replacement doesn't work in my webtemplates. Making the rational assumption that I have done something wrong, any idea what it might be?

yes your variable name is wrong. Try $bbuserinfo[fieldname] instead.