Portal Software - WebTemplates 4.x: VB Integrated CMS (Content Management System)

(This hack is for vb version 4.x and above. For vb 3.x, version see my profile for relevant threads.)

"WebTemplates" is a vBulletin integrated Content Management System which allows you to create vb integrated "HTML" pages in your vb admin cp very easily. The pages can inherit your vbulletin skin/style, can recognize logged-in user, can be applied permissions per user or usergroup basis, can keep visit logs, hit counts and do many more.


WEBTEMPLATES 4.x BASIC FEATURES:

• Very Easy Installation : Webtemplates can be installed to your board without modifying even a single vbulletin file. It is coded as a vb product and can be imported very easily.
• Apply VB Permissions: You can ban any webtemplate to any user or usergroups easily. So for instance you can design a webtemplate which only members can see while guests can not, or only user A can not see etc.
• Page Counter : Each webtemplate has a built-in counter and you can display page count to your visitors and you can edit it or turn it OFF/ON per webtemplate basis.
• Visitor Logging&Tracking : You can track certain users' (by usergroup or userid) webtemplate visits to see who visited a webtemplate and when. This is configurable per webtemplate basis.
• Site Contributers (Editor) Support : You can grant editing permissions for certain users or usergroups for your webtemplates individually and they will be able to update these webtemplates using their own editor interface. vB's WYSIWYG editor is supported in Editor interface.
• Page Browsers & Who is Online Display: Webtemplates can display who is browsing that webtemplate while visitor is reading them (like default forum browse display of vbulletin). Webtemplate visits can also be monitored in who is online page.
• Header/Footer Inclusion : Webtemplates can automatically use headers/footers (your default vb header/footer or custom ones)
• Help Documents : The script comes with an extensive help document.
• Admin Panel in Webtemplates : Your webtemplates can include an "admin panel" displayed to only admins and by using them you can access many details and stats of your page while you are browsing them.
• SEO friendly URLs: You can make webtemplate URLs seo friendly in vb settings (Requires apache server).
• XML Import/Export : XML Import/Export feature allows you to backup your webtemplates and use other hack users webtemplates in your board.

ADVANCED FEATURES FOR ADVANCED USERS:

• Webquery Feature : With advanced "webquery" feature you can create dynamic webtemplates which include database query results. For instance you can easily add "last 10 threads forum X", "most active users list" etc. to your webtemplates with default webqueries that comes with installation or you can create your custom webqueries with basic SQL knowledge.
• Multi Parsing : Webtemplates can parse PHP or HTML or TEXT (=smilie/img tags/bbcode parsing like vb posts). This means you can design a page just like vb posts (TEXT parsing), standart HTML (HTML parsing) or even in PHP (PHP parsing).
• PHPINCLUDE per webtemplate : Every webtemplate has its own "phpinclude" field which you can run PHP codes before loading the Webtemplate
• Theme Support : Webtemplates support "themes" which are parent webtemplates which include child webtemplates in them. For instance if you have 20 similiar pages which uses the same visual look, you can make a single theme for all of them, then just insert their content into this theme. If you change theme later, all 20 pages' visual will change automatically.
• Conditionals : Webtemplates supports VB3 template conditionals so you can design webtemplates which change their display under different conditions.
• Default variables : You can use/display certain variables in your webtemplates like username of the visitor, visitor email address, last visit time, page creation time, page last edit time, Last visitor name, last visit time etc.

Sample WebTemplates from Sites using this hack:
(Most are from 3.x versions but WebTemplate look and feel didn't change much so all will give you the idea.)

http://www.worldwideknights.com/view_mission.htm
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/view.php?pg=aboutus
http://www.hystersisters.com/vb2/view_guidelines.htm
http://www.worldwideknights.com/view_info.htm
http://www.hystersisters.com/vb2/view_books.htm
http://www.worldwideknights.com/view_spread.htm
http://www.makeuptalk.com/forums/view.php?pg=makeuptalk-newsletter
http://www.bklab.com (entire site is designed with Webtemplates only)
(Actually this hack is one of the most popular vb hacks so it is used by hundreds -if not thousands- of vbulletin sites and you can easily find them if you go to google and search "Logician's WebTemplates" WITH quotation marks)

If you use the hack, clicking here will make sure you'll know about updates&bug fixes. It will also help me understand how many people is using the hack so please click the install button if you use it. Thank you..

From FAQ 13: Vbulletin already has a CMS now , why would I need this hack?

If you have CMS license, you might not need Webtemplates. On the other hand, CMS license is paid, webtemplates is free and many forum owners don't have CMS licenses.

Also please note that vb has CMS since 2010. Webtemplates was first released for vb2.x in 2002 and it was around in vb3.x, 3.5.x and above for thousands of vbulletin users who have developed their sites around webtemplates CMS. So regardless of new vb CMS owners might or might not need it, Webtemplates 4.x is still realased and supported as a courtesy to its old users and fans. I personally prefer and use Webtemplates over vb CMS and this hack lives for people who agrees with me.

Version Updates:
12.October.2013 - > Version 4.0.2
* Minor fixes for PHP 5.4.x (Fixes "Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated" errors in new PHP versions.
14.July.2012 - > Version 4.0.1
* Vbulletin changed WYSIWYG editor parsing in vb4.2.x so hack's editor.php is updated accordingly.
9.September.2010 - > Version 4.0.00
* Hack 4.00.00 is released.

[Gn_Snake]

Hi, i don't understand how to put image a background to a custom page.
Help me?

Thank you

[Logician]

Originally Posted by Gn_Snake

Hi, i don't understand how to put image a background to a custom page.
Help me?


Thank you

Make your webtemplate "HTML", then use default html tags:

<html>
<body background="bgimage.jpg">
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
<p><a href="http://www.w3schools.com">Visit W3Schools.com!</a></p>
</body>

[barakuda]

hemm is this mods can add a jquery slide too in the pages?
i think it will be awesome ?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by barakuda

hemm is this mods can add a jquery slide too in the pages?
i think it will be awesome ?

Depends. Technically yes you can of couse any javascript code into webtemplates including jquery. However as with all javascript codes, they mustn't clash with other javascript codes you have in that page as you have a lot of vbulletin's default javascripts in every webtemplate page. So answer is, if you can add jquery to any vbulletin page (eg. show thread page) and IF it does not break any other vb functionality, then yes you can add it to Webtemplates pages too. If it breaks something (eg. Quick reply editor of vb), then you can't but this is not about the hack, this is because 2 javascript sharing the same page should be compatible with each other regarding issues like function/variable names.

[s3nt3nc3d]

Possible bug report...

Installed on 4.2.0 PL2

All works well...except when I went to save my template after editing with the WYSIWYG editor, I get a blank page and the address bar shows mydomain.net/editors.php

No errors or anything in FireFox...just blank page.

Tried it in ie and get an Error 500.

Now if I edit it with the WYSIWYG editor and switch to code view and THEN click to save it, it saves just fine.

Summary:

If I save with the WYSIWYG editor displayed, it goes to a blank page and does nothing else.
As long as I save while in code view (I can edit using either editor with no issues), it saves just fine.

Thanks for this hack...I paid for the vb publishing suite, but I'm running WebTemplates on my older vBulletin site and love it so I ended up disabling the CMS on the new site in order to run WT

Edit: I tried this both with my custom template and one of the premade templates provided. Same problem on both as well. Vbulletin install is pretty fresh so the likelihood is fairly low that it was caused by any mods. I think all I have installed is VSA Advanced Registration and Spam-o-Matic.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by s3nt3nc3d

Possible bug report...

All works well...except when I went to save my template after editing with the WYSIWYG editor, I get a blank page and the address bar shows mydomain.net/editors.php

No errors or anything in FireFox...just blank page.

Tried it in ie and get an Error 500.

Thanks for the well written bug report!

I found out that somewhere along the new versions vbulletin changed WYSIWYG editor structure so it effected the hack. I just released a new version to fix this issue.

For users who has this problem, you do NOT have to make a new full installation of the hack. You can just download hack version 4.0.1 (which is attached to the first post of the thread) and replace "editors.php" in your server with this version's editors.php and this should fix it.

[s3nt3nc3d]

Originally Posted by Logician

Thanks for the well written bug report!

I found out that somewhere along the new versions vbulletin changed WYSIWYG editor structure so it effected the hack. I just released a new version to fix this issue.

For users who has this problem, you do NOT have to make a new full installation of the hack. You can just download hack version 4.0.1 (which is attached to the first post of the thread) and replace "editors.php" in your server with this version's editors.php and this should fix it.

Great, thank you much!

[gedsta]

Hello Logician

Could you please help with a small query?

I am using Everywhere Sidebar Mod and have followed these instructions.

Open your custom template search for

{vb:raw navbar}
add below
{vb:raw sidebaropen}
search for
{vb:raw footer}
add above
{vb:raw sidebarext}
save

But I am stuck at this part,

3. Open custom page php file and before the render line "$templater->render();" add

$templater->register('sidebarext', $sidebarext);
$templater->register('sidebaropen', $sidebaropen);

assuming you are using $templater as variable change it as required

save and upload you php file

Any pointers?

Thanks.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by gedsta

Hello Logician

Could you please help with a small query?

I am using Everywhere Sidebar Mod and have followed these instructions.

Open your custom template search for

{vb:raw navbar}
add below
{vb:raw sidebaropen}
search for
{vb:raw footer}
add above
{vb:raw sidebarext}
save

But I am stuck at this part,

3. Open custom page php file and before the render line "$templater->render();" add

$templater->register('sidebarext', $sidebarext);
$templater->register('sidebaropen', $sidebaropen);

assuming you are using $templater as variable change it as required

save and upload you php file

Any pointers?

Thanks.

I haven't tested it but I believe what you need to do is to edit "view.php", find:

PHP Code:

print_output($templater->render()); 


and before that add:

PHP Code:

$templater->register('sidebarext', $sidebarext);
$templater->register('sidebaropen', $sidebaropen); 


In view.php, there are several of these lines so you should do that change for each of them.

Also please note that integrating that hack with webtemplates can be tricky as webtemplates is more sophisticated than other simple vb hacks. It can use several designs (themes, HTML parsing, PHP parsing, VB code parsing) etc. so trying to add a sidebar there might not always work, it can break layout in certain scenarios. If you encounter such a problem, you need to get a designer to fix these layout problems for you.

So give it shot but don't expect miracles.

[gedsta]

So give it shot but don't expect miracles.

Works perfectly, thanks for your help on this mate. Appreciated.