how to set "hook location"?

[kh99]

{vb raw: totalposts} is used in the template FORUMHOME, and that template is rendered at the end of forum.php. So we look in forum.php and see that there's code that calculates $totalposts, and later a line that registers $totalpost in that template. Now you want to use it in header, well, there's a problem. Header is included in every page, not just forum.php, but the code to calculate $totalposts is only in forum.php. So to make it work in the header you'd need to find the code in forum.php that does the calculations, copy it somewhere before the header template is rendered (like a plugin using hook parse_templates), then register the variable in the header template (and of course, insert it in the header template).

Now there's one problem with that - the code calculates the value for a specific forum, and not every page has just one specific forum associated with it. So what would you do in those cases? And what are you trying to do, do you want the value to display on all pages or do you just want to move it to a different location on the forum page?