Help! Plugin / Database / Template coordination - How Do I?

[carcomp]

I could not think of a single good thread title. Heres what I'm up to.

I want to do the following....

User goes to myforum/somephpfile.php?do=editmystuff&userid=vbulletinuse rid

This php file would just show a textbox with a submit button. Thats all for now. The user could type whatever they wanted, as well as bbcode (it would act like the vbulletin post editor). They could submit that data.

Next, that data would write to the mysql database. It would be stored so that the userid is the "key" and the text would be the "data".

Next, I want a plugin to 'eval' a string placed in MEMBERINFO template. Something like $showmystuff, so that it would pull that data back from the database and assign it to the 'eval'.

I want to be able to dump the 'stuff' that the user posted to the php file in the memberinfo page.

I'm sorry if I am not making good sense. I'm a vb programmer and i'm used to being able to edit code as it runs

Thanks all.

[Lynne]

Why don't you just create a Profile Field and have the users put their text in there? Read up on Profile Fields in the manual which is linked in my sig.

[carcomp]

I thought about that. The thing is, I want this profile field to be a bigg text box so the user can create a sort of "page" like you would do on myspace even regular html. Do you know of a way to update a profile field from a php file? I don't really want the user to see all the other fields too.

[Lynne]

You could write a page for just modifying that one profile field. However, I'm not sure that you may enter html into a profile field and have it parsed as html, so if your goal is to have html, then I don't think profile fields will do it.

vB suggests that you don't allow users to use html on the site because of the malicious things they could do. You'll have to be careful in writing this so that they can't do anything like that.

[carcomp]

No i was using a metaphore... Like html... I guess that was a bad metaphore. BBcode would be more like it. I would like to give my users the ability to construct pages themselves. I suppose i'll just write some custom bbcodes to allow things like <tables>, <center> etc.

We run a VERY close membership forum. We have "bashes" where we all meet together. The likelyhood of some loser messing it up is pretty slim. Besides, I didn't think about just slapping it together and sending it online. I want to add the option to approve stuff later on etc. Maybe I feel a Mod coming on?

I certainly don't want you to do the coding for me, but do you know of any examples of something like you stated? I'm very new to how vbulletin works (like the $vbulletin->something-> something stuff). I'm reduced to just looking at php modules that I have already, and the plugins that are active on my site... Reverse engineering them.

I learn this way I guess. I taught myself Visual Basic (see www.mediaengine.org) for my current masterpiece in this fashion.. Looking at what others have done and finding new / better / different ways of doing it the way I want. Like I said though, I'm very new and tend to rely on others for the first 20% sometimes

BTW: I didn't know if it matters to you, but we (as a forum of 7 admins) regularly buy vbulletin licenses. You aren't helping a freeloader.

Check out our forum. http://www.quad4forums.com We are *very* proud of it. Check out the search thing in the navbar... Thats a 'mod of a mod'.. The live search mod.