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!

[wajones]

Thank You for this hack, makes my life sooooo much easier

[kippesp]

Great, great utility!

I didn't realize until this evening that blank templates were ignored during importing. Thought others may be interested to know this. (This was probably decided because the writetofile doesn't create null files.)

At any rate, I've since changed the logic in my copy so that blank templates are considered like every other template. I won't post any code since it was very clear this was intended. But if you want my changes, just ask.

[alsakher]

Great hack (y)

[Jawelin]

Hi, Chen!
Finally trying to use the 'import' feature after the upgrade, I found a couple of problems:
- Filenames (2002-02-02_.... etc.) aren't correctly managed
- I got an error in the script while trying to replace one existing template
- typo error 'export' instead 'import' in second section near "Choose templates to export selectively?"

Thanks a lot.
Bye

[Lucky]

Got vbp3.0pr7 and vb2.2.2 and all is working great!

Thanks. again Firefly

[Admin]

ROFL Lucky...

[Thomas P]

Hi,

just want to let you know that I use a similar hack since nearly one year :china:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...threadid=15693

Export/Backup only.
Together with Beyond Compare a nice setup to localize and maintain updates to vB.

Good news that the idea is improved further
cu,
-Tom

[Admin]

I see... but his script doesn't import templates.

[Jawelin]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jawelin
Hi, Chen!
Finally trying to use the 'import' feature after the upgrade, I found a couple of problems:
- Filenames (2002-02-02_.... etc.) aren't correctly managed
- I got an error in the script while trying to replace one existing template
- typo error 'export' instead 'import' in second section near "Choose templates to export selectively?"

[Thomas P]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by FireFly
I see... but his script doesn't import templates.