Where to start, beginning a custom css (no html tables) hack.

[christopher_c]

I've just started using VB (after trying out phpbb and ipb) mainly because it allows me so much more control over the templates. What I dislike about VB (and all forums for that matter) is the over use of html tables & poorly placed html code. Namely, I don't want the search engine spiders to see 600 lines of junk html code + navigation + .... before they get to the beef of a post. For that reason I've been using the VB style manager to rewrite the html with new css designed content to replace the tables.

As I've been getting aquainted with the vb system, I've started also wondering how much "reinventing of the wheel" I'm doing here. For that reason I thought I'd look into what is already available. Some of the things I'm interested in doing are:
1) Setting up individual components of VB so that I can include them in other parts of my website (outside of the /forum/ base directory). Ideally what I'd like to be able to do is either use a php (include"") statement or a function call to insert that code. For instance, say on a given page on my site I wanted to include the navbar's user CP code. I want to do a insert_user_cp() and have it display something like:
<div class="userCP">
.....VB generated info about user.....
</div>

Does this type of functionality exist yet?

Problems I've encountered
1. GENERIC_SHELL does not seem to affect pages. Namely, when I insert some custom code into it, it doesn't display on individual pages. For instance, I have to repeat the same absolute div to include a floating logo on each of forum_display, forum_home, etc. templates.

2. Inability to include php code. For instance, at the bottom of the forum_display template, I'd like to add the line <? include"/home/....../logo.php" ?>, however this doesn't work. Do I need to manipulate the VB files themselves to make this happen, or is there something I'm missing to create PHP includes.

Thanks,
Chris