Freeing the variables

[doubleclick]

One of the most important things in this current internet environment is to be able to turn on a dime to keep up and/or surpass others, particularly facebook, twitter, pinterest, etc, etc, etc..

Is there some script, include, product, htaccess, or plugin that will allow all vbulletin variables to be displayed above the forum directory? With the current setup, to be able to display variables outside the forum directory, by the time a plugin and template has been created, the need for it has passed. I know about vbadvanced, but I have had an existing website for years before it existed, and my site structure is already in place.

Has anything been written to allow us to just copy and paste a line of code into a normal html or php page outside the forum directory to call a variable or one of the smaller templates like the postbit? The ability to do this without having to install more products or plugins, then edit or create templates in the admin panel would be great.

I'm hoping that with such a popular product as vb, it's longevity and creative users, this has been done, and I just can't find it. To me, it seems a product that simply adjusts the forum path to be public_html/forum (or whatever you want) instead of all paths considering the forum directory to be the root. Or even if it isn't easy, the benefits seem worth it to put in some time for this.

Does anyone know if this already exists or if anyone is working on something like this?

[kh99]

Not sure exactly what you want - is it that you want to pull some info from vbulletin and use it on an external page? Which info are you talking about?

[doubleclick]

Hello Kh99

I would like to have the freedom to display anything anywhere, on the site really.

Here are a couple of examples off the top of my head, but the main point I'm trying to make is to have the flexibilty to use anything anywhere quickly.

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Be able to incorporate the dropdown forum navbar menu in my site's main menu.

[kh99]

Yeah, funny you should mention such a thing because I've been thinking about exactly such a mod, since I think a lot of people want to modify their site but don't have the time and/or ability to learn programming to figure out what variables they can use where, or how they can make something available in a different place. Unfortunately it doesn't exist yet, that I know of.

I've wondered why vbulletin isn't more "modular" or whatever the right term is. For instance, someone just asked about moving the "What's going on" info somewhere else, but there is no vb function to call to get that information, it's built in to a couple of page scripts. I guess it's probably just that it was never designed that way.

[doubleclick]

Back in the day, when forums were a new concept, and everyone was excited to be out of alt.discuss.something newsgroups, whizzing along with the latest 2400 baud modem forums, were the center of many websites. But fast forward to today, where Facebook and Google make it two clicks away from using their widgets in and out of their own systems, the concept is starting to become more quaint than cutting edge. Unlike the ease that social media makes it to share information, forums, on the other hand make it incredibly complicated to share info even in other directories in the same website. Then there is the complex system of formatting, requiring an internal template and an external page to get one page up and running. And even after changing colors, and a million plugins, forums all look pretty much like colorful spreadsheets.

Hopefully the developers here will do something in future versions to loosen the grip the code has on the content, phrases, and layout. I know I didn't buy vbulletin to learn to code - I bought it to spread information around, in and out of my site, and to be able to make it look more interesting than a glorified spreadsheet. It's hard enough to keep up with html and php, much less add a new layer of code that makes it harder rather than easier to adapt. And adapting is what the 21st century is all about, especially on the internet. If you can't keep up, you can't survive.

I'm not criticizing vbulletin per se, as most forum software looks and acts the same way. I just hope that in the future, rather than trying to build on the accomplishments of days gone by (which were amazing in their time), one of these forum companies (hopefully vbulletin's) start looking to the future and by making the content and design much more flexible.