Help using color variables on non-vb pages?

Hello, I am somewhat of a php novice and am trying to write my own frontend to vB. I have been reading for about a day now and I can't seem to figure out why I can not use the color variables like

<td bgcolor="{ firstaltcolor }"> (minus the spaces)

in my code to display colors in a non-vb page.
I am including my global.php.

When I try to view the file it displayes { firstalcolor } instead of the hex color.

If anyone knows how I can use the vb colors please let me know. I haven't had much luck doing searches.

[Logician]

these variables are parsed if they are within a template. So you can put your codes inside a custom template you create and call it from your .php file like this:

PHP Code:

eval("dooutput(\"".gettemplate('yourtemplate')."\");");