Advanced Templates: Dynamic Templates Changing according to different conditions

This hack allows you to design dynamic vb templates which change themselves according to different conditions. Thus you can customize your board very powerfully with "intelligent/interactive" templates. It uses the same "conditional concept" just like my Webtemplates and Dynamic Forum Announcements Hack. With conditionals you can program your templates to:

• be displayed differently to different users.
• hide/display some part/texts/html codes/even the entire template for some users
• include extra text/HTML codes/secret messages inside which will be displayed if page visitor matches your pre-configured criterias
• Have multi-templates inside 1 template and each of them will be parsed and displayed only if their set condition applies.

You can program your templates according to many different criteria, such as:

• user's userid
• user's usergroup
• user's profile fields' input
• user's post number
• user's last visit time
• user's seniority (register date)
• today's date, day, month, week, year, hour, second, if today is user's birthday
• user's is visibility status
• style id user's using
• user's cookie status
• user's time settings
• (in forumdisplay templates) forum id
• (in showthread templates) thread id
• etc.

Some practical examples about what you can do with this hack:

• You can have different postbit templates for different users/usergroups.
• Display your board differently to the user if it's his birthday, if he is X, if he age <Y, if he didnt visit your board since Z etc.
• Display Admin Only Profile fields/or any profile fields in postbit if X condition applies
• You can hide Admin only links in your templates such as "Show IP".
• Disable Email/Pm User links in postbit or userprofile screen if reader is from usergroup X etc.
• Send different email text to different users according to different criteria. Add hidden email texts if X condition applies
• Hide "register" link if user is not a guest, add access to pm if user is not a guest
• Ban some templates if X condition applies such as dont display profile screens if user's X profile field = Y
• Disable some forums if today is X day or hour is Y
• Dont display thread view/user count/last reply date if user's usergroup is X
• Hide threads according to different criteria in showthread templates

Well there are literally millions of possibilities you can apply, so please use your imagination for more examples..

The Hack's Features:

• Installation is VERY easy: Actually 2 steps in 1 file will take less than 1 minute..You will be surprised how such a small modification will make such a big difference in your board.
• It's compatible with ALL vb versions I know
• The hack covers all the templates in your database: ie. custom templates, ALL vbulletin templates including even emails and error messages etc.
• It's fully compatible with all your installed hacks and their custom templates too.
• It makes many small hacks obsolete because you can now modify your templates to achieve the same result instead of hacking your board (=changing .php files)

Vbulletin v.3 has been announced to have "conditional" concept in templates, however my hack wasn't inspired by it at all, because I'm using the conditionals in my Webtemplates hack since March 2002 so in fact vb developers might be inspired by me. My Dynamic Forum Announcements hack uses the same concept for forum home announcements too.. (Wait for my other hacks depending on conditionals cause I really like them, they are really powerful and customizable)

Performance Issues
The hack does NOT add any MYSQL connections. It just process your already retrieved templates in a function to parse the hack conditionals. Thus the performance is IMO quite bearable. However please notice that if a template has a conditional in it, the hack have to parse it before displaying it and technically this parsing is done with PHP's preg_match command which is known as a powerful but slow command. So does it cause any performance problems? In most cases no. But if the conditionals are applied in a very frequently used and/or long template and/or you used too many conditionals in one template AND your traffic or server load is high, this MAY increase your PHP processing time whenever this template is displayed as the hack has to deal with the conditionals everytime this template is called. I suggest applying Teck's Microstat's hack and observe the PHP running time with that hack after you applied a conditional especially in a frequently used template (eg. postbit). If it slows down the display, simply reduce your conditional count in that template or delete the conditional or remove the hack altogether. Personally I dont have any performance problems in my own board related to this hack but just wanted to give my 2 cents anyway especially for high-traffic boards..

If you liked the hack (I guess you will), I strongly suggest checking out my Webtemplates hack which provides exactly the same feature for your NON-VB pages.

Also please click INSTALL if you use the hack, thank you..

09.Sep.2002 Bug Fix: If you installed the hack before 09.Sep.2002 please download the instructions again and reapply step 2, since I made an update for a small bug fix. There was a variable name collision which causes a problem with email validation screen which uses the same variable so I changed my variable's name. If you are downloading the hack now, go ahead.. The code you download is already fixed..
07.Oct.2002 UPDATE: I updated the hack code, so that people who have enabled template debugging in their Admin CP/vb Settings can also use the hack. Also small modification applied to increase template parsing time. If you installed the hack before my update, you may choose to reinstall (not necessary). If you are a new hack user, the instructions you download is already new version's.

Enjoy!
Logician \\=^))

[Marulatree]

nope - that didn't work.

It puts this prints back to code all over the top of my page:

[[(((6==6 OR 6==7 OR 6==9) AND (23==28 OR ==28 OR 23==23 OR ==23)))]] Please ingnore [[/((6==3 AND (23==8 OR ==8)))]] [[(!(6==3 AND (23==8 OR ==8)))]] Please ingnore [[/(!((6==6 OR 6==7 OR 6==9) AND (23==28 OR ==28 OR 23==23 OR ==23)))]]

[Logician]

previous post edited, try again

[Marulatree]

Puuurrrrfect! - That woulded like a charm! Thanks for all your help!

[daFish]

Hiho,

first of all: wonderfull and great hack, Logician.

But now my question:

Whats the variable where the Style ID is stored when a member is logged in?

-Fish

[Logician]

Originally Posted by daFish

Whats the variable where the Style ID is stored when a member is logged in?

what style id are you referring to? if it is user's style choice, try $bbuserinfo[styleid]

[Frozen Dreams]

Can I just say that this hack rocks?!
Since seriously it does. I cant believe I never saw this any earlier. Would have saved me so much brainwrecking it aint funny. Two thumbs up - this is really awesome work.

ETA:

Either I am too tired or just too blonde
Could someone help me with the following conditional:

1.) Certain Number of PMs in all Folders and Certain Usergroup (I have PM Quota per Usergroup hack installed). Notice to go onto Index and into the private messaging templates.

2.) Birthday note on index. I fiddled around but I just couldnt get it right

I dont want to use the Dynamic Announcement for either of both since I am using that for something else - and well I just have the announcement variable as a global one and in too many templates.

Mighty thanks in advance. Help is very appriciated.

[Kerrek Cage]

How would I go about creating a forum that is only open at certain times during the day, any other time it's hidden and closed to posts? Is that possible with this hack?

[Logician]

Not really. But IIRC I gave this hack in hack requests forum to make the forum "something" (closed?) in certain times during day.

[gmarik]

Logician

Are you remaking any of your hacks under vb3 or are you waiting for RC1? Interesting question ...

[Logician]

Originally Posted by gmarik

Are you remaking any of your hacks under vb3 or are you waiting for RC1? Interesting question ...

Some of my hacks (like this one) become default feature in vb3 so there is no need to import them.

I will import the rest but I can not give an ETA for any of them because:
a) I have too many hacks some of which are major projects so recoding them takes time.
b) I'm busy nowadays with professional projects so I can't spend time on this converting hacks.
c) I don't plan to migrate to VB3 until its final release comes up+a few more weeks to ensure stability. So RC1 does not mean anything to me regarding my board's imigration.

Bottom line is I will recode all my hacks for VB3 but it is really not possible for me to give a date for any of them. For small projects you can expect "soon", for large ones sometime after final VB3 version comes up.