Accessing fields from showthread.php

[davide101]

I'm implementing revenue-sharing in my forum. It's working perfectly except I can't get the user's AdSense code to show up in the banner.

QUESTION 1: How do I check for the thread starter and grab the fields before loading the banner?

Right now all the SQL calls that pull in the information I need are located *after* the banner is loaded. Before I go moving things around and mutilating my showthread.php file, does anyone have any suggestions on how I might best approach this? Do I just need to write a sql call to pull in the info or is there a better way?

QUESTION 2: Is there an overview of accessing data like user ID, usergroup, post_count, etc. from within any template?

This process would be much simpler if I can grab the info in the head include, decide which values to use for the current pageload, and just reference the variables in all of the ads.

I'm in a bit over my head so any help is greatly, GREATLY appreciated!

David