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How to create your own vBulletin-powered page! (uses vB templates)
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Gary King
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Gary King Gary King is offline 03-03-2004, 10:00 PM

Want to create your very own vBulletin powered page which includes the header, footer, and the user permissions system as well?

Well now you can

Want to know how it will look? Take a look at the attached screenshot below!

Now includes the Who's Online modification!
Also, instructions included on how to create your own pages that are integrated with current vBulletin files!

I'm going to give you a generic page but you can easily modify the contents of the page by changing the template

So here we go

Instructions:

Create a new file, whatever you want to call it (let's say test.php).
Open up test.php and add the following (replace TEST with whatever template you want to show):
PHP Code:
<?php

// ####################### SET PHP ENVIRONMENT ###########################
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);

// #################### DEFINE IMPORTANT CONSTANTS #######################
define('NO_REGISTER_GLOBALS'1);
define('THIS_SCRIPT''test'); // change this depending on your filename

// ################### PRE-CACHE TEMPLATES AND DATA ######################
// get special phrase groups
$phrasegroups = array(

);

// get special data templates from the datastore
$specialtemplates = array(
    
);

// pre-cache templates used by all actions
$globaltemplates = array(
    
'TEST',
);

// pre-cache templates used by specific actions
$actiontemplates = array(

);

// ######################### REQUIRE BACK-END ############################
require_once('./global.php');

// #######################################################################
// ######################## START MAIN SCRIPT ############################
// #######################################################################

$navbits = array();
$navbits[$parent] = 'Test Page';

$navbits construct_navbits($navbits);
eval(
'$navbar = "' fetch_template('navbar') . '";');
eval(
'print_output("' fetch_template('TEST') . '");');

?>
Be sure to change 'TEST' to the actual template name, and change 'test' to the filename. Also, change 'Test Page' to whatever you want to show in the navbar, such as 'Viewing Member Profile' (just an example).

Now create the template, called TEST with the following content:
HTML Code:
$stylevar[htmldoctype]
<html dir="$stylevar[textdirection]" lang="$stylevar[languagecode]">
<head>
<title>$vboptions[bbtitle]</title>
$headinclude
</head>
<body>
$header

$navbar

<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
<tr>
    <td class="tcat">Title</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td class="alt1">Text</td>
</tr>
</table>

$footer
</body>
</html>
All done
Now check it out by going to test.php

Who's Online Modification

Now if you want to show who is browsing this new page of yours, just open up includes/functions_online.php and find:
PHP Code:
    case 'bugs.php':
        
$userinfo['activity'] = 'bugs';
        break; 
Below, add:
PHP Code:
    case 'test.php':
        
$userinfo['activity'] = 'test';
        break; 
(Be sure to change the values to your own!)

Then find:
PHP Code:
        case 'modcplogin':
            
$userinfo['action'] = $vbphrase['moderator_control_panel_login'];
            break; 
Below add:
PHP Code:
        case 'test':
            
$userinfo['action'] = 'Viewing Test Page';
            break; 
All done!

----------------------------------

Also if you want to create your own pages 'within' current vBulletin files, do the following:

Open the file you want, and then right before the final ?> in the source code, add the following:

PHP Code:
if ($_REQUEST['do'] == 'xxx')
{
    eval(
'print_output("' fetch_template('TEMPLATE_XXX') . '");');

Replace 'xxx' with whatever you want ?do= in the query string to be (for example, replace 'xxx' with 'showprofile' so then someone would type in example.php?do=showprofile to view this template.) Then of course, change TEMPLATE_XXX to your template name, it's that simple!


edit by Lynne: If running 3.8.4 or above, see this post to take care of the PHP 5.3.0-related problems - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1171
Attached Images
File Type: jpg template_test.jpg (62.5 KB, 0 views)
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  #1322  
Old 04-20-2011, 02:06 PM
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BirdOPrey5 BirdOPrey5 is offline
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Are they linked to your main forum pages somehow? That will let them be found by google when they index your site.
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  #1323  
Old 04-20-2011, 02:20 PM
soundbarrierpro soundbarrierpro is offline
 
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Thanks for the reply BOP. Not sure what you mean regarding being linked to my forum pages.

They're all created as http://mydomain.com/page1.php......page2.php....etc
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  #1324  
Old 04-20-2011, 02:54 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by soundbarrierpro View Post
Thanks for the reply BOP. Not sure what you mean regarding being linked to my forum pages.

They're all created as http://mydomain.com/page1.php......page2.php....etc
How would someone visit these pages, are they links in your header, footer, or navbar for example? If I browse to yourdomain.com how many clicks does it take for me to get to one of these pages. If there are too many clicks needed, or they aren't even visible, they won't be indexed by google.
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  #1325  
Old 04-20-2011, 03:12 PM
soundbarrierpro soundbarrierpro is offline
 
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Thank you for reply, yes these are all links, and its the only way to get to the pages. Unless of course you already know the exact URL which can be typed directly into the address bar.

So basically, meta data is pointless anyway, huh?
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  #1326  
Old 04-20-2011, 03:25 PM
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I wouldn't say it's useless but Google is pretty good at determining what is real content and what is not. You just want to make sure the pages can be accessed by Google.

You want to use traditional HTML links, not fancy JavaScript or Flash for making links that google spiders will ignore.
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  #1327  
Old 04-20-2011, 03:29 PM
soundbarrierpro soundbarrierpro is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5 View Post
I wouldn't say it's useless but Google is pretty good at determining what is real content and what is not. You just want to make sure the pages can be accessed by Google.

You want to use traditional HTML links, not fancy JavaScript or Flash for making links that google spiders will ignore.
Thank you for reply. All great help here.

Yes, they are indeed always html, (I don't know anything more than HTML) coding-wise. Would it help if I add the pages to robots.txt?
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  #1328  
Old 04-20-2011, 05:32 PM
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I've only used robots.txt to block spiders. Not sure if it works the other way around. One thing you might want to check out is producing a "site map" that will tell the search engines which URLs to crawl. (Or at least tell them they exist, it doesn't guarantee anything.)
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  #1329  
Old 04-20-2011, 06:08 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by soundbarrierpro View Post
Thank you for reply. All great help here.

Yes, they are indeed always html, (I don't know anything more than HTML) coding-wise. Would it help if I add the pages to robots.txt?
Just having a link to the page on any of your pages will get it indexed if there is content and its not duplicated. Search engines follow a "click tree" so:
Homepage>link to forum x page>
>links to threads
>Links elsewhere on page
>links to other forums, pages (like your custom one) and external links

So link to your pages anywhere in your site and they will eventually be crawled , or you can submit the url directly to google to crawl.
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  #1330  
Old 05-03-2011, 06:06 PM
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Hi all,
to remove from the navbar?
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  #1331  
Old 07-01-2011, 03:01 AM
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nice... I was wondering how to list latest threads from forums to the page you just created?

cheers
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