Use Profile Field Values in Templates

[iDCamps]

I know that much, thanks though.

Let me try to rephrase.

Basically what I want to do is go through and anywhere that a username is shown (in last posts, in post headers, etc), I want to replace that value with a profile field.

I've accomplished this in one place, in memberaction_dropdown. However, it only takes affect when viewing an actual thread, because apparently that's the only place that the field variables are caught (elsewhere it uses the username still because I have it show that using a conditional that checks if the field is set).

So, what I -think- is my problem is I need a way of injecting variables into the various templates I need.

That much I can accomplish using a plugin which is currently hooked to global_start which preRegisters the values I need for each template. I can then go into each template and put those variables into use.

The tricky part is obviously I need to do these changes based on some other value. For example, in some places I'll need to determine what the current value is. This is where I'm stuck... how can I figure out what that value would be.

I know PHP forwards and backwards, but I'm still confused how vB passes variables around between the various template bits, and more importantly, how I can intercept those.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. If I'm approaching this from the wrong angle, please let me know. The only requirement I'm trying to maintain for this goal is to not have to edit any core code.

Thanks.