Styles - this should be easy, correct?

[Una Persson]

I read the documentation, and I searched on such things as "styles", "replacement", "template", etc. But I still really do not understand how styles work in the new vBulletin. Is there some step-by-step documentation online that explains them, and how to work with them? Here's my situation:

1) When I add a new style, I have options by Replacement Set of "Create new replacement set", "default", or can select from several others, which I have previously (I thought) deleted. What does this mean?

2) When I add a new style, I also have options by Template set of "Create new template set", "default", and several others I thought I had deleted. What do these mean?

3) All I really want to do right now is have all Forums have the same header and footer, and change the Forum picture in each Forum to be unique. That's all. What is the best way to go about this?

[Kier]

I think the easiest way to achieve this would be to follow FireFly's instructions here:

http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26182

[Una Persson]

Well, his suggestion is a good one, but it says that it does not work while one is viewing threads. I want the graphic in a Forum, and all threads underneath it, to be the same. This was trivial in 1.1.6 - surely there must be an easy way to do this in 2.0.3?

[Kier]

Actually, I believe his system will work on the showthread page as well as on forum pages.

[Una Persson]

I regret to say that it seems not to work once you are down in a thread, as (I suspect) it does not know what the $forumid is. I will likely have to look at the template option again. Is there a tutorial that explains how I should use the template functions to do this then?

[Chen]

Nope, it doesn't work inside threads. The problem is that global.php (evals phpinclude) is called in before the forumid is pulled from the database.

[Mike Sullivan]

*cough* Try $getforum[forumid] *cough*

[Una Persson]

Originally posted by Ed Sullivan
*cough* Try $getforum[forumid] *cough*

Forgive me for being inexperienced at this - I am assuming that this is a function that returns the id of the forum you are viewing the thread in? If so, it looks promising. Would I put it in the phpinclude code that Firefly wrote in the other thread?

[Una Persson]

Never mind, I figured it out - it seems to be working perfectly now for all cases.

I'm not *actually* dumb, just over-cautious when changing new things.

[Chen]

This is what I used.

if($getforum[forumid]) {
  $forumid  = $getforum[forumid];
}

if (!$forumid) {
  $logo = "{titleimage}";
} else {
  $logo = "{imagesfolder}/logo_forum";
  $logo .= "$forumid";
  $logo .= ".gif";
} 

Thanks for the tip Ed!
Someone should add this to the Tips and Hints forum... a lot of users seems to ask this question.

[Una Persson]

Firefly, I found a possible bug with the code here.

As-implemented, it seems to kill the "Move Thread" function (I posted about it in "Troubleshooting"). I got around it by using a temporary variable (at the suggestion of my babe ) in this way:

if($getforum[forumid]) {
  $pinky  = $getforum[forumid];
}

if (!$forumid && !$pinky) {
  $logo = "images/vBulletin_logo.gif";
} else {
  $logo = "images/logo_forum";
  $logo .= "$pinky";
  $logo .= ".gif";
} 

[Chen]

Actually it should be

if($getforum[forumid]) {
  $pinky  = $getforum[forumid];
}
$pinky = $forumid;
if (!$pinky) {
  $logo = "images/vBulletin_logo.gif";
} else {
  $logo = "images/logo_forum";
  $logo .= "$pinky";
  $logo .= ".gif";
} 

Tanks for telling me!

[Mike Sullivan]

if($getforum[forumid]) {
  $pinky  = $getforum[forumid];
}
$pinky = $forumid; 

You realize that if block serves no purpose whatsoever with that code, right?

[Chen]

Yeah, but I'm used to put blocks everytwhere - blame it on my teacher!
And besides, I like things organized.

[Una Persson]

Wait a second, Mr Sullivan - is my code correct then? The way I read it, it checks to see if there is a valid return for the $getforum function, if so sets local variable "$pinky" to it, and then goes on to the next block. Then in the next block, it sees if we don't have $forumid or $pinky, and if we don't it uses the default image. Else, it uses $pinky to construct a filename.

My code appears to work perfectly, and the Move Thread function is uncorrupted. Am I still doing something improper here?

And why doesn't "$pinky" go out of scope as soon as the code leaves the first braces, since it is dynamically created there? I must admit, I did not believe the code would even work at first, but my little gal told me to try it anyways, and it did.