WebTemplates v.0.1 (Old Version)

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Attention: This version of webtemplates is obsolete since new version (2.xx) is released as of 30.June.2003.

If you are new user, please visit new hack's thread and install that one, not this version.

This thread is active for discussing migration issues and will be closed in the future.
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Introduction:
Basically this hack allows you create vbulletin powered non-vb pages within vb admin CP and administer them just like vb templates.

Your "webtemplates" reside inside MYSQL and have the same structure as regular vbulletin templates and you edit/modify/delete them inside your Admin CP. You can create as many as you like and display them like:
http://yoursite URL/yourboard URL/show.php?pg=YOUR_WEBTEMPLATE_NAME.

Features of Your WebTemplates:
* You can easily edit/update your non-vb pages from your vb control panel just like vb templates. No need to FTP or smt.
* Simply backup your vbulletin and your entire site (including your webtemplates) is backed up too.
* You can use some vbulletin variables in your non-vb pages, so eg. address your members with their member names in your entire site.
* Your entire web site can mimic your forum's visual interface. All your fonts/colors etc. are kept in your non-vb. pages too. Besides users' style sets apply for your web templates either. So for instance if you have 2 styles, every user will see your webtemplates in the style and colors they are using in the board.
* This hack allows you to specify usergroups/usernames which can or cannot see the page you designed. So your non-vb pages can inherit vb. access permissions. Every webtemplate can have different display permissions for different users/usergroups.
* You can have counters in your pages and show/trace page visits individually for all your pages. Every webtemplate has its own counter.
* You can have "last visitor's name and visit time" in all your pages.
* You can insert fixed header/footer for all your pages.
* The "conditionals" you can set, allow you to design advanced and dynamic web pages, which change themselves according to the conditions you set. For example you can set different texts/page designs IN THE SAME PAGE for different users and every user will only see the text that is addressed to him.

Webtemplates are very easy to create. Just copy paste the HTML code of your page into the webtemplate box, give it a name, click submit and voila, your webtemplate is up and running! By using this method, you can convert your existing non-vb pages into webtemplates with ease too. It is just a matter of copy/paste its HMTML code. Installation of the hack is easy too and the hack will work any version of vbulletin I know.

For Advanced Users: If you want your webtemplates to get data from your database and display it, you have an advanced feature named "webqueries". WebQueries feature allows you to run SQL queries in your MYSQL database and automatically create sorted tables for you which you can add in any WebTemplates. So your non-vb pages can be dynamic and you can have any kind of SQL results (related with vb or not) in any page you want. Webqueries are optional to use and appeals to people with basic SQL knowledge. You can still create webtemplates very easily without using webqueries if you don't know SQL or don't need to query your database in your webtemplate. If you want to play with webqueries, please read and follow instructions CAREFULLY. This hack gives you advanced tools to create powerful and dynamic web pages, so give yourself sometime and learn how to create these pages. I wrote help pages which you can find in your webtemplates section after installation, so please read them carefully and examine sample page's code before pelting me with questions!

If you installed this hack, share your webquery samples in this thread


Fixes and Add-ons:
* If you have than 1 MYSQL databases, webquery section might not work properly. If you encounter any problems related to that issue, apply the small fix in this post.[/COLOR]
* If you want to display your webtemplates in who is online, apply this small hack .
Also there is a small bug with "conditionals" feature of the hack, if you use more than 1 conditional in 1 webtemplate. I guess very few people use this feature but anyway I fixed it in the new release that is in progress..
* If you want your webtemplates search engine friendly and indexed in google or other search engines, read this tip by Piper.

Current version (BETA v.0.1) is NOT actually a beta anymore, it's proven to be working very well in many people's boards and is stable.

I plan to develop this hack. However to enhance it more, I need to change its algortihm which requires rewriting and I wait for VB3 so that the hack will will be competible with VB3 too. That's why development is pending at the moment.


If you install the hack please click install, thank you.

Regards,
Logician //=^))

[Alan Ang]

hi logician, thanks for your reply...

Originally posted by Logician

what do you mean by "you cant preview webquery"? You cant access webquery screen inside your Admin CP? Can you list webquery list in Admin CP when you click modify query? Can you access your webquery when you click one in the modify query screen? Or is it just webquery doesnt work when you load a webtemplate?

i can access the webquery, i can edit webquery, but i just can't preview, that's all.

Have you modified any webquery? Was it so when you first installed the hack and loaded whoareyou or did it become broken after sometime?

I must say that this is weird

after my installation, the problem already exists.
it is wierd, didn't see anyone else in here having the same problem.

Anyway here is my tips:
1- First apply the fix to show.php a few messages above and let's see if it will do the trick.

pardon me, i don't get you... what is the fix that you are referring to?

2- If not please delete your tables via these SQL commands:

drop table webtemplates;
drop table webtemplatequery;

(You have a tool to run a SQL query right? If not, you can use this one)

After deleting both, run installation script again..

this will be my last resort.

Do you mean replacing your index.htm with this template or inserting the results returned from this template inside index.htm?

Or if you just mean to put the link of the template in index.htm, you should link it just like a normal internet URL:
<a href="http://myURL/show.php?pg=whoareyou">My Template</a>

BTW. can I see your webtemplate? What's the URL?

yes, i mean replacing the html... is it possible to embed into the html?
the webtemplate is at www.poolfanatic.com/forum/show.php?pg=whoareyou

[Logician]

Originally posted by Alan Ang
i can access the webquery, i can edit webquery, but i just can't preview, that's all.

does "cant preview" mean, when you load your webtemplate, your webqueries are not displayed? However you can list/edit/insert them inside your Admin CP, right?

pardon me, i don't get you... what is the fix that you are referring to?

here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...547#post255547

yes, i mean replacing the html... is it possible to embed into the html?

You have a few options for this:
a) You can set your .htaccess file and point index.html as /url/board/show.php?pg=yourwebtemplate and so your main page will be this webtemplate
b) You can set your main page as index.php instead of index.html and in your index.php, you can include any webtemplate you want (see here for more info)

the webtemplate is at www.poolfanatic.com/forum/show.php?pg=whoareyou

as you can guess I can see it, as I'm a guest. Please first apply the fix above and if it doesnt work give guests access (with [cansee] tags) to this webtemplate so that I can see it.

[grb123]

Nice one Logician - I'm just installing this hack on a test server and I am pretty impressed so far!

One question:

How do I include a template in another template? I thought you could just create a template and then use $templatename like we do with $header and $footer but it's coming up blank instead of including the template.

[futureal]

Man, I had just sat down to try and write something like this. Looks awesome!

I am going to install this on one of my test sites and see how it goes.

[Logician]

Originally posted by grb123
How do I include a template in another template? I thought you could just create a template and then use $templatename like we do with $header and $footer but it's coming up blank instead of including the template.

@grb123:The hack by default lets you include only 2 templates (header and footer) inside other templates. But considering the fact that I have received this request frequently nowadays, I might include such a feature to the new release.

However I'm can not follow the reason of including webtemplates into other templates. Can you please clarify why you need this feature? I mean you can simply insert the HTML code of the other template inside the other one and what will be the point of including the code as a seperate template?

Please also clarify if you want a feature to parse webqueries in the included webtemplate or not? I mean if the included template does not have webqueries in it, it can be simplier to add such a feature but if you have webqueries then the script need to parse them too which requires more work.

@futureal & grb123: Since you are testing the hack out, maybe you would be interested to test the new version (which has not been released yet). It's fully competable with the existing one so you can use your existing webtemplates and webqueries and it has powerful new features. If you want to help me test it out to catch bugs, add new features etc., please provide me with your email address so that I can send you the file. Thx.

[grb123]

Hi Logician

Thanks for the reply. The reason why I want to include templates is to make it easier for our site editor to update the sections he needs to update without getting lost in all the code in the rest of the page.

For example:

We have an Events page. This consists of three sections: the standard $header, a side bar which is specific to all the pages in the events section, and the list of events. At the moment the side bar and the events list are text files which are included in the page using SSI. The editor only has access to the events list which he updates as events are sent to us. This makes it easy to update as he only sees the bit that he updates.

I wanted to therefore create 3 WebTemplates: Events (main page), Events_Side (side bar) and Events_List (the list of events.) I could then tell the editor to just to to Events_List whenever he needed to update an event. If all of these are in one page, it is a lot of code in a small template box and for a non-IT person this can get very confusing.

The included template may have webqueries in it though it's not essential. Our side bars currently contain the last 10 posts from each forum depending on which page is being loaded, but I can also just not have an included side bar template if that makes it easier and instead just have two templates, Events and Events_List.

Hope that makes it clearer!

I would be more than happy to test the new version though I've only just installed this and haven't even tried the queries yet.

[grb123]

Another useful feature would be a backup for WebTemplates only, as per the vBulletin styles. I've done it using mysqldump and just dumping the webtemplates and webtemplatequery tables, but if we had it in the control panel that would be nice. OK, I could add it myself, but you may want to include it in a future version.

I've also noticed that if you include links in the footer, you need to hardcode them ie show.php?pg=pagename rather than {template=pagename].

Is there anyway that the vbulletin search can also include searching the WebTemplates pages?

[Logician]

Originally posted by grb123
Another useful feature would be a backup for WebTemplates only, as per the vBulletin styles. I've done it using mysqldump and just dumping the webtemplates and webtemplatequery tables, but if we had it in the control panel that would be nice. OK, I could add it myself, but you may want to include it in a future version.

Actually it is in your Admin CP: Click "Backup Database" inside vb Admin CP and choose tables webtemplates and webtemplatequery to backup your entire webtemplate/webquery data. This is one of the nice feature of the hack, you back up your vb and your entire site is backed up..

However I also added a new feature to the new version: You can export your webtemplates/webqueries as a text file. I integrated this feature so that hack users can easily share their useful webtemplates/webqueries, but it's also useful for archiving purposes (I'll send you the new version ASAP, you can test the feature)

I've also noticed that if you include links in the footer, you need to hardcode them ie show.php?pg=pagename rather than {template=pagename].

Yeah, header and footer are not designed to be parsed. Because I dont want to increase PHP script running time with all these features, however it can be achievable with one line of code if that is what you want.

Is there anyway that the vbulletin search can also include searching the WebTemplates pages?

Can be possible with hacking but would be a hard job. VB's searching design is quite complicated and you may need to commit too much time to first solve the system, then integrate this feature.

An easier method would be to create a webquery that makes searches in your webtemplates. In the new version webqueries work with ourside variables so you can design such a powerful webquery which accepts user data and searches webtemplates according to this keyword. However please notice that some of your templates may have conditionals (eg. hidden text for certain users) or may be private (open to some users only) and if you search keywords in your entire webtemplate db, these info may be exposed..

[grb123]

Originally posted by Logician
Actually it is in your Admin CP: Click "Backup Database" inside vb Admin CP and choose tables webtemplates and webtemplatequery to backup your entire webtemplate/webquery data. This is one of the nice feature of the hack, you back up your vb and your entire site is backed up..

Ah, sorry - should have checked there! Thanks! Yes, that is also one of the reasons why your script interests me so much - at the moment I have a fairly static site but updating and backing up is a bit of a hassle. So far, WebTemplates seems to be much easier, apart from the ability to include other templates as I mentioned earlier.

Yeah, header and footer are not designed to be parsed. Because I dont want to increase PHP script running time with all these features, however it can be achievable with one line of code if that is what you want.

No, it's fine as it is thanks. I don't want anything that is unecessarily going to increase server load.

An easier method would be to create a webquery that makes searches in your webtemplates.

That's exactly what I want! But I have no idea how to create it!

[Logician]

Originally posted by grb123
That's exactly what I want! But I have no idea how to create it!

Please consult to the help page section related "outside variables". You can use the info there. To recap:

You first need to create an HTML form (in a static HTML page or in a webtemplate, your call) and put a input text box there to let your users enter the keyword to search. Then create another webtemplate and make sure the form POSTs the form data to that second webtemplate. To that second webtemplate, attach a webquery which takes the user keyword and by using it searches the relevant field of "webtemplates" table and sorts the found results. Then by clicking the sorted results user can visit the webtemplates which has these keywords.

I again want remind you that if you have "private webtemplates" or "private sections in public webtemplates" these can be exposed unless you exclude these webtemplates in your webquery.

If you are not familiar with the tecnical concepts I mentioned here or cant manage to do your searching feature yourself, remind me your request after I released the new version and I can give you the webtemplate/webquery that does it.

@To other users of webtemplates hack: The feature (ie "outside variables") I quote in this message, is not included in the webtemplates version (beta) you are using at the moment. This feature is included in the new version of webtemplates and although it's not yet released, grb123 is beta testing it.