Portal Software - WebTemplates 3.7.x: VB Integrated CMS (Content Management System)

(This hack is for vb version 3.7.x & 3.8.x ONLY. For vb 3.6.x, 3.5.x, 3.0.x and 2.x 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.

VB4 version Update (9.9.2010): Please find 4.x version of WebTemplates4.x in its own thread.


WEBTEMPLATES 3.7.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:
(Some 3.5 and some are 3.0 versions but WebTemplate look and feel didn't change much so both 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://www3.fertilethoughts.com/forums/view.php?pg=acronyms
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)

3.5 version Admin CP screenshot attached to this post. 3.0.x screenshots (here and here) also still applies for this version.

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..

About this 3.7.xx Version: This 3.7.xx version is same as previous 3.6.x version. 3.6.x version was already working in vbulletin 3.7.x except a few minor bugs and these bugs are fixed in this version to make it dedicated solely to vbulletin 3.7.x. Please see "what's new" in the next post for more details.

Version Updates:
29.July.2008 - > Version 3.7.00
* Hack 3.7.00 is released.

[ArnyVee]

Originally Posted by Logician

301 redirection will work but then the url will change. So for instance your visitor will type wdbhub.com in her browser but after 301 redirection, she'll end up at waltdisneyboards.com/forum/view.php?pg=wdbhub

If this is ok, yes you can do it. If you don't want browser url to change, you can consider options these:
1- If you domain registration company supports domain forwarding you can give it a forwarding command in your control panel and their name server will automatically push users to your webtemplate without domain change
2- You can put a simple html file to your wdbhub.com which has a iframe to waltdisneyboards.com/forum/view.php?pg=wdbhub and users will not notice domain change in the addressbar.

Very good

As to the first suggestion, I'd have to check with godaddy.com to see if they have that option. I would assume they do, but I'll check into it.

Any suggestions as to how to do the second option you mentioned? I'm not good with HTML. Any help with this would be appreciated.

I haven't read through all of the material yet, but are there templates already included for those of us that are not familiar with HTML? I was planning on purchasing or downloading a template that I liked from somewhere on the 'net. But, if there is something that I can tweak, that would help me as well.

And, thanks for supporting your mod as you do! Fantastic job!

[ArnyVee]

I just checked on godaddy.com and they have something named 'masking' which looks like may do the trick for me.

"Masking redirects Web traffic for a domain to a specified URL, preventing the forwarded domain URL from displaying in the browser's address bar."

That would be my best option, right?

[Logician]

Originally Posted by ArnyVee

I just checked on godaddy.com and they have something named 'masking' which looks like may do the trick for me.

"Masking redirects Web traffic for a domain to a specified URL, preventing the forwarded domain URL from displaying in the browser's address bar."

That would be my best option, right?

Yep it seems like it.

And as for the second method you can use a html code like this in your wdbhub.com domain:

<html>
<head>
<title>welcome to wdbhub.com</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
MY wdbhub header
<IFRAME SRC="http://www.waltdisneyboards.com/forum/view.php?pg=wdbhub" WIDTH=450 HEIGHT=100>
MY wdbhub footer
</body>
</html>

[ArnyVee]

Thank you so much Logician! What great support you provide for this mod (and assistance with 'other' things as well!).

I'm going to read through the materials to see if there are any ready-made templates for your mod. If not, then I'll find a nice template to use, get the code and drop it into this mod to see how it comes out.

Thanks again!

[soundbarrierpro]

What does this do specifically? Is it a substitute for the "vbulletin powered pages"? If it is, I'm interested, usergroup admin doesn't work on mine no matter what I do and I'd like to create pages based on priviliges.

[Logician]

Originally Posted by soundbarrierpro

What does this do specifically? Is it a substitute for the "vbulletin powered pages"? If it is, I'm interested, usergroup admin doesn't work on mine no matter what I do and I'd like to create pages based on priviliges.

This is not a substitute for vbulletin powered pages, it can be a substitute for this hack. This hack is around since 30.Jun.2003 and vbulletin version 2.0.

Please read first post to see what it is about.

[soundbarrierpro]

Thank you Logician. I've got lots of vbpowered I'd like to re-do with this mod. I'm going to give it a shot. Been mulling it for a couple weeks. Guess it's time.

[YsTyle]

great job
marked as installed & nominated for MOTM

[mlthmp]

Works great! Also nominated!

[space?]

Sounds great. Will install later, thanks.