How do you set your template editing environment?

[simsimt]

Hello,

Editing templates on large scale basis can be really overwhelming. I've come across this when trying to make huge editing to my FORUMHOME template. In order to be able to experiment freely, I made another template & called it FORUMHOME_test & copied FORUMHOME content into it. Then I made a test.php script using Gary King's method to work as a second index page.

But things were not satisfying to me as the new index page was empty & I have to manually create other forums so that I can visually test modifications results! Another problem I came upon is vBulletin variables within templates as there are no ready lists to variables that are required in templates. I thought of using some IDE editors but I know of no FREE ones that can do this. Other simple editors like EditPlus & Notepad do not provide such advanced features.

So, how do you work with template editing inside vBulletin? Do you have any tips & tricks you would like to share that can make template modifying easier?