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 \\=^))

[Logician]

Originally posted by Bandit
I installed this hack and all of a sudden my forums started to show the default templates for every style I have. The template is still the same (in the user cp), but my forums just show the default one... I tried uploading the old functions.php but it did not fix the problem. Any ideas??

The hack is quite simple with 2 changes in functions.php. No template editing, no db alterations and no other modifications in any other vb file. Therefore if you replace the functions.php with the older one, it's impossible for the hack to affect your board in anyway. It will be successfully removed. Therefore your problem doesnt look like related to the hack.

And actually I cant think a reason the hack will behave like this either. Technically the hack does not interfere the loading of the template, it just interferes when the already-loaded template is returned to the vb so the behaviour you describe does not fit its algorithm..

I dont know how I can help you about this problem you encountered. I suspect you might applied a step wrong while installing and changed a section which you shouldn't touch. However this still does not explain how come you have the same problem when you reverted the function.php though..

[Okiewan]

I can't believe this hack isn't hack of the year, no doubt the most powerful I've seen, excellent work!

Please excuse the noob question, but...

1) I understand the conditional formating
2) I'm not sure where to place the conditional in the template.
3) Here's the goal:

Usergroup X can not see the "Change Style" portion of their user options.
Usergroups A, b and C can.

4) I assume a copy (modify options2) of modify options needs to be made, then a conditional put in the original. If usergroup x goes to modify, the conditional sends them to the copy ("modify options2")

Someone help me out with this?
Thanks!

[Logician]

Usergroup X can not see the "Change Style" portion of their user options.
Usergroups A, b and C can.

it's easier than what you think:

edit template "modifyoptions" and find:

PHP Code:

$stylecell 


Replace it as:

PHP Code:

[[($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]!=X)]]
$stylecell 
[[/($bbuserinfo[usergroupid]!=X)]] 


Enjoy..

[Okiewan]

Oh man, that's sweet
Thanks! Again, great hack.

[N9ne]

I voted for the warning system hack for the HOTM, but that's because I hadn't installed this...but now that I have, I vote this hack of the millenium, Logician, you've done one great job here! This tiny change to some code adds so much functionality to my forum!

Just a thumbs up for this, this is truly brilliant, well done.

[N9ne]

Question: Can the ismoderator function somehow be used?

[Logician]

Originally posted by N9ne
Question: Can the ismoderator function somehow be used?

give it a try but I'd say no. Conditionals are not designed to run functions and ismoderator is a function that needs to be run to produce a result. Conditional works with variables..

[danrak]

How do I set it up so a group of IPs can see a message? For example say I want everyone from 192.168.1.x to see a message, or say IPs from 192.168.1.x and 255.255.255.x to see a message?

[Logician]

Originally posted by danrak
How do I set it up so a group of IPs can see a message? For example say I want everyone from 192.168.1.x to see a message, or say IPs from 192.168.1.x and 255.255.255.x to see a message?

I neither test it, nor sure if it works but give it a try:

[[(substr($REMOTE_ADDR, 0, strlen(X))==192.168.1)]]
your template content for users whose IP is starting with 192.168.1
[[/(substr($REMOTE_ADDR, 0, strlen(X))==192.168.1)]]

Replace X with the character length of IP you used at the end.
For example:
if you use "192.168.1.255" X is 13
if you use "192.168.1" X is 9
if you use "192.168" X is 7
if you use "192" X is 3 etc.

[Karmulian]

I installed this hack on vbb2.2.9

ever since i have been getting PH memory leaks
and over 60mb's worth of leak is somethig to worry about

when i removed (quoted out) the announcements funtion in /admin/functions.php the errors stopped

anything you can guess at that would be causing this problem?

PS - i really love thjis hack and have been using it loads.. until the errorsa started.. i would like to use it again