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!

[geniuscrew]

OK it doesn't ^^

[Littlebit]

wow..I used it to aid in the store hack install...it worked wonderfully! Thanks

[LightBringer]

Hey Firefly, quick question.

My default or unchanged templates aren't getting exported.

Created and edited work just fine but the default ones are not.

Any advice?

[ethics]

Superb job, Firefly. Made my StoreHack importing of 60 templates a breeze. Thank you so much!

[Dynamic One]

Thanks for this super hack. Can realy use this 1.

[Axel Foley]

Chen, I always used this hack and it worked fine.

I then moved to a new host, just reinstalled the hack and everything seems to work fine (all the templates are shown correctly, even default ones during export).

Once I export in the templates dir I only find CREATED & EDITED templates, not the default ones, even though I selected ALL the templates.

My configuration is:

vB 2.2.8

Server Type
Linux / PHP v4.1.2

MySQL
v3.23.41

I noticed that other users are having these problems, could you please take a look at this Chen?

I appreciate the support I'm sure you'll give all of us for this hack, it is a real time-saver and a must for every busy vB admin.

[penna2k]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ontherun
Installed

But, when I do a export, the templates folder is created but there is never a file there, of any kind.

Where did I go wrong................there is no errors in the ACP

Win2K Advanced Server
vB 2.2.8
PHP 4.2.3

[Visionray]

this is a great hack, definite timesaver.

[spazeman]

great hack. this should be a part of vB.

[themonarch]

Whoa! Awesome hack! Huge props to FireFly!