Template Backup System!

Hi everyone.

Here's my newest hack, called Template Backup System (TBS).
This is a very powerful tool for backing up and restoring your templates, especially good for upgrades.

I know you can do this using vBulletin's buil in style manager, but the beauty in this hack is that it exports only templates, and further more - they are saved to individual files in a folder you choose.

Why you ask? This could help a lot when upgrading to a new version of vBulletin. Just like you can compare files using programs such as Araxis Merge or Beyone Compare, you can now also compare templates, and easily keep track of changes that were done between versions.
After you save all changes to the template files, you use this script again only this time in the opposite directions - restoring the templates back into the system.

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This hack was in testing process for quite some time now, over a week and a half actually.
It has been tested extensively by the magnificent Hooper, and I truly believe it's 99% bug-free.
Most of the features in the hack are actually his ideas, so thanks a lot Rick!

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Before I continue, I need to say the expanding / collapsing feature will only work on Internet Explorer. It was only tested on it really, but I think the style.display thing is only supported by it.

Anyway, let's install this baby.

First of all, we need to edit admin/index.php a little bit.
Find this:

makenavoption("Add Template Set","template.php?action=addset");

and replace it with this:

[high]makenavoption("Add Template Set","template.php?action=addset","<br>");
makenavoption("Template Backup System","tbs.php?action=modify");[/high]

Save admin/index.php and upload back to your server.

Now edit cp.css (in the main forums folder). Now here's a file you don't edit often, huh?
Find this:

.cc { /* custom color */
	COLOR: darkblue;
}

and add this right after it:

[high].rc { /* custom color */
	COLOR: darkred;
} [/high]

Save cp.css and upload back to your server.

And last but not least, download tbs.php (attached to this post) and upload to your admin folder on your server.

That's it, installation is done.

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A few notes.

You can add new groups for template listing by editing tbs.php.
At the top, you will see something like this:

$groups['calendar']='Calendar';
$groups['emailsubject']='Email Subject';

and much more. To add your own group, simply add this:

$groups['[high]template_identifier[/high]']='[high]Group Name[/high]';

[high]template_identifier[/high] is the beginning of each template in this group, and [high]Group Name[/high] is the name of this group.

When saying "Using this requires a minimum amount of RAM." I am not kidding. If you don't have enough memory your browser will simply crash when clicking the Check All box. Trust me.

Make sure the folder you are saving templates into is CHMODed 0777, or PHP will not be able to create files in it. Also, the folder is a relative path to the admin folder, not the forums folder!

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That's all I have to say.
Feedback and feature requests are welcomed as always!

Have fun!

[Axel Foley]

Kippesp...you're the man...

I used your version, and it fixed the problems I had, but I noticed some little glitches on template-colors in the list (they differed from the legenda) and some textual inaccuracies. I also changed the default file extension to .htt (as suggested by Bira long ago). I've attached this final version to this post.

Thank you very much for your help.

[Marzas]

mine doesnt work, it always has this error

Warning: OpenDir: No such file or directory (errno 2) in /home/viraxco/public_html/admin/tbs.php on line 128

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/viraxco/public_html/admin/tbs.php on line 129

what the hell is that? lol

[Marzas]

bump

[Marzas]

spoke too soon, i fixed it, it was supposed to be in a folder called templates, well anyway i did it and click import, click expand, nothing there?
how come, all the files are uplaoded
please i need this quick
cheerz

marzas

[kippesp]

The script must be located in the admin directory (i.e. the same spot as config.php and all the other admin files). There must be a directory for the script to read/write files from/to named 'templates' (or whatever is entered in the form). On a Unix file system server, that directory must have writable permission by the webserver (a chmod 777 does the trick).

So basic file structure is this:
forums/admin/config.php
forums/admin/tbs.php
forums/admin/templates/[templates stored here]

And I know this is a rather long thread. But when the original author does not support his/her hack, you really should read the entire thread (a good idea anyway). This has been posted before and discussed as well.

[Darkwaltz4]

wow. very, very much wow. im amazed, --this is exactly what i am looking for..

story time:

having 5 different styles (soon to be 6) i got into the habit of not updating the styles that were no longer new....so consequently, there were always a slew of styles that were not as good....when it came time to update all of them, downloading and uploading full styles led to problems....so...i turned to here, and look what i found....amazing...excellent--very wow, thats all i can say. thanks firefly a definate "install" for this.

[phd]

"Make sure the folder you are saving templates into is CHMODed 0777, or PHP will not be able to create files in it. Also, the folder is a relative path to the admin folder, not the forums folder!"

can I create my own? CHMODed 0777

[scsa20]

@phd - wha?? if you mean making your own folder, that's what you so'pose to do, go into the admin folder (/forumroot/admin/) and make a new folder called templates (even tho you could name it something else if you please, but nameing it templates is more easyer) and then CHMOD it 777... doing that is easy, just right click on it and choosed either (depends on what FTP program your using) CHMOD or Properties or if your FTP program has a command line, type in SITE CHMOD templates 0777 (I think that's the code, it's been awhile) and that'll make the folder writeable, meaning that a script can write in that folder.

[dstruct2k]

And how would you go about setting permissions on a folder on your local computer? Here's my problem:

• I am running Windows XP Pro
• I am my own webhost, through Apache HTTPD Server
• I have absolutely no clue how to do a CHMOD on a local directory
• Most of my scripts work anyways, even without doing a CHMOD.

Could someone explain to me what the CHMOD is supposed to do in the first place? Or how I could do it?

Any help would be appreciated.

______________

PS: Amazing hack, Chen! This will be great for keeping all of my styles updated! Thanks!

[LilDragonWings]

For the love that is all holy and godlike.

THANK YOU for this hack.