Custom template, plugin & hook problem

[stephenNYC]

Hi-
I have been up most of the night wrestling with this and can't find what I did wrong.
Any help would be very much appreciated.
I am trying to add a custom plugin, and this is what I have done:

1. Made a custom template named 'rightCol' with the content: "testing" and wrote $rightCol on a page.

2. Made a plugin, 'rightColplugin' (hook location: parse_templates-- should it be in global_start?) and set it to active. The contents are:
eval('$rightCol= "' . fetch_template('rightCol') . '";');
the Execution Order was left at the default, 5

3. Made a 2nd plugin, 'callrightCol' (hook location: 'cache_templates') and set it to active. The contents are:
$globaltemplates = array_merge($globaltemplates, array('rightColplugin'));
the Execution Order was left at the default, 5

thanks a lot
Stephen

got it! that worked fine- after the user was logged in! I had been testing it on the login page, not in the site.
Not sure why that was, must be a conditional somewhere I didn't see.
Thanks anyway
Stephen