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RonHiler · #1 01-05-2011, 02:11 PM

Hey guys, I hope this is the right place.

Many years ago I customized my Standard_Redirect to pull a random quote from another template file and display it whenever the redirect page came up. This worked great. And it was only like 8 or 10 lines of code, not a huge change.

Yesterday, I upgraded my board from 3.7 to 4.1, and during the process, it had marked that template as conflicting. Not surprising. It wasn't immediately obvious how to keep my modification with the changes made to the default template. Since I was in a hurry to get my board back up and running, I told it to go back to the default template, figuring I could pull up the template history later on to put my modification back in when I had a bit more time to look at it.

Well, as it turns out, you can only get a template history if the template is already customized. Since I went back to the default, there is no history to go back to. Oops.

I am definitely not a php guru (although I am a C++ programmer). I'd like to recreate that code, but I'm not really sure how to go about it. The quotes live in a phrase file called "randomquotequote", the contents of which are very simple:

Code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT">
<!--
var r_text = new Array ();
var a_text= new Array ();
r_text[0] = "A quote";
a_text[0] = "The Author";
...and so forth...
r_text[16] = "The last quote.";
a_text[16] = "The Author";

var i = Math.floor(17*Math.random());

document.write(r_text[i]);
document.write("<BR>");
document.write(a_text[i]);

//-->
</SCRIPT>

What I had added in the Standard_Redirect template was to simply access this file to grab a random quote and display it (in a box, just above the redirect box). But now I don't remember how to do that, or even really where to put it.

Can someone with a bit more PHP knowledge than me give me a nudge in the right direction?

--------------- Added [DATE]1294246356[/DATE] at [TIME]1294246356[/TIME] ---------------

Okay, I think I got it. The most intimidating part was figuring out how to access that phrase file, the rest is just formatting. Once I got that, it was pretty simple. I don't know if this is breaking any rules, but it seems to work. I just added this code to the top of Standard_Redirect (just after the <body> tag)

Code:

<!-- my custom change -->
<BR><BR><BR>
<div class="standard_error">
	<form class="block vbform" method="post" action="{vb:raw formfile}" name="postvarform">
		<h2 class="blockhead">Today's Quote</h2>
		<div class="blockbody formcontrols">
                          {vb:rawphrase randomquotequote}
		</div>
	</form>
</div>
<!-- end custom change -->

Let me know if there is anything I ought to change to make it "safer" in terms of the VBulletin code. Of course, I guess this change has to be made to each style individually (is there any way to change a template across all styles at once?).

BTW, anyone is welcome to use this or similar code if they want random quotes to appear on their redirect page. It's kind of a popular secondary feature on my board

X vBulletin 3.8.12 by vBS Debug Information
Page Generation 0.04579 seconds Memory Usage 2,204KB Queries Executed 11 (?)
More Information
Template Usage: (1)SHOWTHREAD (1)ad_footer_end (1)ad_footer_start (1)ad_header_end (1)ad_header_logo (1)ad_navbar_below (1)ad_showthread_beforeqr (2)bbcode_code (1)footer (1)forumjump (1)forumrules (1)gobutton (1)header (1)headinclude (1)navbar (3)navbar_link (120)option (1)post_thanks_box (1)post_thanks_button (1)post_thanks_javascript (1)post_thanks_navbar_search (1)post_thanks_postbit_info (1)postbit (1)postbit_onlinestatus (1)postbit_wrapper (1)showthread_list (1)spacer_close (1)spacer_open (1)tagbit_wrapper Phrase Groups Available: global inlinemod postbit posting reputationlevel showthread	Included Files: ./showthread.php ./global.php ./includes/init.php ./includes/class_core.php ./includes/config.php ./includes/functions.php ./includes/class_hook.php ./includes/modsystem_functions.php ./includes/functions_bigthree.php ./includes/class_postbit.php ./includes/class_bbcode.php ./includes/functions_reputation.php ./includes/functions_threadedmode.php ./includes/functions_post_thanks.php Hooks Called: init_startup init_startup_session_setup_start init_startup_session_setup_complete cache_permissions fetch_threadinfo_query fetch_threadinfo fetch_foruminfo style_fetch cache_templates global_start parse_templates global_setup_complete showthread_start showthread_getinfo forumjump showthread_post_start showthread_query_postids_threaded showthread_threaded_construct_link showthread_query bbcode_fetch_tags bbcode_create showthread_postbit_create postbit_factory postbit_display_start post_thanks_function_post_thanks_off_start post_thanks_function_post_thanks_off_end post_thanks_function_fetch_thanks_start post_thanks_function_fetch_thanks_end post_thanks_function_thanked_already_start post_thanks_function_thanked_already_end fetch_musername postbit_imicons bbcode_parse_start bbcode_parse_complete_precache bbcode_parse_complete postbit_display_complete post_thanks_function_can_thank_this_post_start tag_fetchbit_complete forumrules navbits navbits_complete showthread_complete
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