Advanced Templates: Dynamic Templates Changing according to different conditions

This hack allows you to design dynamic vb templates which change themselves according to different conditions. Thus you can customize your board very powerfully with "intelligent/interactive" templates. It uses the same "conditional concept" just like my Webtemplates and Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack. With conditionals you can program your templates to:

• be displayed differently to different users.
• hide/display some part/texts/html codes/even the entire template for some users
• include extra text/HTML codes/secret messages inside which will be displayed if page visitor matches your pre-configured criterias
• Have multi-templates inside 1 template and each of them will be parsed and displayed only if their set condition applies.

You can program your templates according to many different criteria, such as:

• user's userid
• user's usergroup
• user's profile fields' input
• user's post number
• user's last visit time
• user's seniority (register date)
• today's date, day, month, week, year, hour, second, if today is user's birthday
• user's is visibility status
• style id user's using
• user's cookie status
• user's time settings
• (in forumdisplay templates) forum id
• (in showthread templates) thread id
• etc.

Some practical examples about what you can do with this hack:

• You can have different postbit templates for different users/usergroups.
• Display your board differently to the user if it's his birthday, if he is X, if he age <Y, if he didnt visit your board since Z etc.
• Display Admin Only Profile fields/or any profile fields in postbit if X condition applies
• You can hide Admin only links in your templates such as "Show IP".
• Disable Email/Pm User links in postbit or userprofile screen if reader is from usergroup X etc.
• Send different email text to different users according to different criteria. Add hidden email texts if X condition applies
• Hide "register" link if user is not a guest, add access to pm if user is not a guest
• Ban some templates if X condition applies such as dont display profile screens if user's X profile field = Y
• Disable some forums if today is X day or hour is Y
• Dont display thread view/user count/last reply date if user's usergroup is X
• Hide threads according to different criteria in showthread templates

Well there are literally millions of possibilities you can apply, so please use your imagination for more examples..

The Hack's Features:

• Installation is VERY easy: Actually 2 steps in 1 file will take less than 1 minute..You will be surprised how such a small modification will make such a big difference in your board.
• It's compatible with ALL vb versions I know
• The hack covers all the templates in your database: ie. custom templates, ALL vbulletin templates including even emails and error messages etc.
• It's fully compatible with all your installed hacks and their custom templates too.
• It makes many small hacks obsolete because you can now modify your templates to achieve the same result instead of hacking your board (=changing .php files)

Vbulletin v.3 has been announced to have "conditional" concept in templates, however my hack wasn't inspired by it at all, because I'm using the conditionals in my Webtemplates hack since March 2002 so in fact vb developers might be inspired by me. My Dynamic Forum Announcements hack uses the same concept for forum home announcements too.. (Wait for my other hacks depending on conditionals cause I really like them, they are really powerful and customizable)

Performance Issues
The hack does NOT add any MYSQL connections. It just process your already retrieved templates in a function to parse the hack conditionals. Thus the performance is IMO quite bearable. However please notice that if a template has a conditional in it, the hack have to parse it before displaying it and technically this parsing is done with PHP's preg_match command which is known as a powerful but slow command. So does it cause any performance problems? In most cases no. But if the conditionals are applied in a very frequently used and/or long template and/or you used too many conditionals in one template AND your traffic or server load is high, this MAY increase your PHP processing time whenever this template is displayed as the hack has to deal with the conditionals everytime this template is called. I suggest applying Teck's Microstat's hack and observe the PHP running time with that hack after you applied a conditional especially in a frequently used template (eg. postbit). If it slows down the display, simply reduce your conditional count in that template or delete the conditional or remove the hack altogether. Personally I dont have any performance problems in my own board related to this hack but just wanted to give my 2 cents anyway especially for high-traffic boards..

If you liked the hack (I guess you will), I strongly suggest checking out my Webtemplates hack which provides exactly the same feature for your NON-VB pages.

Also please click INSTALL if you use the hack, thank you..

09.Sep.2002 Bug Fix: If you installed the hack before 09.Sep.2002 please download the instructions again and reapply step 2, since I made an update for a small bug fix. There was a variable name collision which causes a problem with email validation screen which uses the same variable so I changed my variable's name. If you are downloading the hack now, go ahead.. The code you download is already fixed..
07.Oct.2002 UPDATE: I updated the hack code, so that people who have enabled template debugging in their Admin CP/vb Settings can also use the hack. Also small modification applied to increase template parsing time. If you installed the hack before my update, you may choose to reinstall (not necessary). If you are a new hack user, the instructions you download is already new version's.

Enjoy!
Logician \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally posted by trainer
what is this like on server load? it seems to be pretty hard on my site. any ideas?

IMO it's performance is quite good. For once there is no extra SQL connection this hacks creates on your site so it doesnt increase MySQL load. As for PHP performance, it's quite bearable and the increase is very trivial (at least in my site). Check my message a few lines above for its reason. But if you want to make sure, install Nakkid's (Teck) microstats hack and check the PHP running time before and after the hack. There is no significant load in my site..

But if you want to improve the performance better, here is a code I was already planning to add to the hack:

edit functions.php, find:

PHP Code:

return advanced_templates($template); 


Replace it AS:

PHP Code:

if (substr_count($template,'[[/(')>=1)
{
return advanced_templates($template);
}
else
{
return $template;
} 


This will stop parsing for regular templates (=not having conditionals inside) thus will increase the performance..

BTW. Did my suggestion work for your problem?

[trainer]

once again thanks for the reply Logician. your sugestion worked for my first problem. didn't even know what that was until you pointed it out!

[Marshalus]

Does anyone know if this adds any additional DB queries?

[Logician]

Originally posted by Marshalus
Does anyone know if this adds any additional DB queries?

No it does not..

Please check 2 posts above..

[BlueVoltage]

I tried installing this twice! I keep getting this error:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /home/xelerix/public_html/x/admin/functions.php on line 823

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: vbdate() in /home/xelerix/public_html/x/admin/sessions.php on line 407

[BlueVoltage]

I tried installing this twice! I keep getting this error:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in /home/xelerix/public_html/x/admin/functions.php on line 823

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: vbdate() in /home/xelerix/public_html/x/admin/sessions.php on line 407

[Logician]

Originally posted by BlueVoltage
I tried installing this twice! I keep getting this error:

If you are sure you applied step 2 correctly (it is REPLACE AS, not insert BEFORE or AFTER, and make sure you changed the file in Notepad), post here your functions.php just lines between 810 - 850, not the whole file) and let me see what you did wrong..

[BlueVoltage]

i got it now. sorry. GREAT HACK!!!

[mikey8270]

great hack

is there any way to make it show like 'You have relied to this thread' or You have not replied to this thread' somewhere on the showthread page to everybody except guests?

[g-force2k2]

meh... okay Logician buddy im looking to you for support now

anways i get the infamous 6==6 as stated in the past posts...

only problem is i don't use debug mode for the templates (i checked) and i even made the appropriate change just incase and it didn't seem to solve my problem ;P either way excellent hack...

its probably just something 'stupid' anyways could it have anything to do with php version? thanks in advance man... superb work as always

g-force2k2