This thread will be both to help those who want to develop templates, code modifications, wordlets, modules and plugins.

Do not post any UBB Code in this thread, not even one line.

Instead, we'll work on the list of each file and what it is used for.

This should be invaluable as a tool for beginning, intermediate, and advanced developers.

First, we'll start with the public template files. This should be a group effort, so feel free to contribute your current knowledge.
http://www.ubbdev.com/ubb/upload/00000494/function.txt

Alright, here's what I've got to contribute. (I know all about all the public templates now, thanks to me going through them all several times now. :D)

- public_age_check.pl
Controls the first page seen when one clicks the "Register" link and the COPPA check in enabled.

- public_common.pl
Has lots of little bits that get displayed on several different pages. The common header, table top, and table bottom, are some examples.

- public_confirm_delete.pl
The page that you see after you've clicked the Delete button - asks you if you're sure if you want to delete it or not.

- public_daily_topics.pl
Not sure... I think this is the stock version of Active Topics.

- public_display_profile.pl
This is what you see when you click on someone else's name to see their profile.

- public_display_rules.pl
This shows the rules and regulations of the forum - part of the registration process.

- public_edit_post.pl
The page for editing posts.

- public_edit_profile.pl
The page for editing your own member profile.

- public_faq.pl
The page shown when you click the "faq" link up at the top.

- public_forum_page.pl
The page displayed when you click to go inside a forum. This is the "successor" to forumdisplay.cgi.

- public_forum_summary.pl
The page that displays the list of all the forums and categories.

- public_found_pw.pl
The page that displays to confirm that your password has been emailed to you after you've filled out the form.

- public_login.pl
The page for logging into the UBB.

- public_lost_pw.pl
This contains the form you fill out to get your password emailed to you if you've forgotten it.

- public_move_topic.pl
The page that gives you the options of where you want to move a topic to.

- public_my_profile.pl
The main profile page that contains your rank, PM list, editing link, etc. First page you see when you click the "my profile" link at the top.

- public_new_reply_form.pl
Page for replying to a topic.

- public_new_topic_form.pl
Page for creating a new topic.

- public_pm_form.pl
Form page for creating a new Private Message.

- public_pm_list.pl
Page that controls the way your PM lists (ignore list, buddy list, any more?) are displayed.

- public_pm_topic.pl
Page for displaying a PM that someone has sent to you.

- public_query_forum_pw.pl
If a forum is password protected, and you are not an administrator or moderator, you are shown this page and asked for the forum password.

- public_rating_list.pl
Not sure...

- public_reg_confirm.pl
Final page in the registration process that displays all the information you entered. (Adult [13+] version.)

- public_reg_confirm_kid.pl
Same as above, but for COPPA child registrations.

- public_register_page.pl
The main registration form where you enter all of your information. (Adult version.)

- public_register_page_kid.pl
Same as above, but for COPPA child registrations.

- public_rules_for_minors.pl
Shows all the forum rules if the registrant is a COPPA kid.

- public_search.pl
Page for searching the forums.

- public_search_results.pl
Page that lists the results of your search.

- public_show_email.pl
Page that shows someone else's email address when you click the "email" button in one of their posts.

- public_show_ip.pl
Page that shows the poster's IP address.

- public_topic_page.pl
Page that shows the topic thread.

- public_ubb_code_page.pl
Page that displays the UBB codes available at your forum.

- public_ubb_friend.pl
Page that shows the form for emailing a topic from the forum to a friend.

- public_user_posts.pl
Page that shows the recent posts made by a user after you've clicked that link from their profile page.



---Skorpion

Wow, Skorpion, thank you! Great starting point. I had an eye on this forum for a few but needed somewhere to spring from. Thanks too Allen.

Gonna go look at some files now.

Muchas gracias Skorpion that was a lotta info there... I updated the download file and added a few more from the commom.pl file. I am not sure what the rating file is myself, as I haven't seen where the wordlets it calls are in the forum.

- public_daily_topics.pl
page that lists topics that have been updated (posted on) for today.

- public_ratings_list.pl
Page you visit to see the full list of ratings you've given to other members.

Where does that ratings page actually get found/ used? I couldn't find it.

Seems like I remember accidentally finding it a long time ago, right after v6 came out. But now I can't find it either. I dunno where it is.

---Skorpion

If you rated alot of people it says:

complete list

so you click it and it shows exactly who you rated what.

I just got fed up trying to fix and improve Infopop's horrible code (both Perl and HTML) for the templates.. right now, I'm writing a short script that will tell me:

• which subroutines each file contains and
• which variables, wordlets and URLs each of them references.

I then plan on creating a custom set of templates written completely from scratch. The result will use CSS instead of oodles of FONT tags, produce nicely formatted readable HTML, and generate a very concise and compact look.

I started out modifying the public_topic_page.pl but don't have the stamina to proofread and fix the HTML and code for every single template file, constant hitting of Refresh and looking at the resulting source anew included..

To give you an idea about the looks: top and bottom of a thread.

(Notes: The rank pictures and misc button graphics are taken from the game Total Annihilation, but since they respect the forum's style settings they will be changable to whatever you wish. The rank hack will not be included in the template; it is a real hack, not a template modification. I plan on releasing it separately as well; but I'm postponing that because I want to make it a "proper" hack including CP page to configure the ranking etc.)

[ April 03, 2001: Message edited by: Screamer ]

Looks nice screamer, should help tremendously in download size and validation efforts.

Yep, that's what I wanted..

Anyway, here's the results: [..snip..]

Edit: I removed the very lengthy result text I had posted here. I have changed the script so that it dumps a set of HTML files documenting one template file each, including the info on each separate file posted here, and uploaded it to [..snip..]. That URL is only temporary however, it will soon go to a different server in some 12 hours or so. I will post again here when I know the new URL.

Note: I just realized the "this varilable modified here" hits are not all exact. I ran the script over my modified UBB6.01 templates so the output would be slightly different for a vanilla public_topic_page.pl.

HTH

[ April 04, 2001: Message edited by: Screamer ]

Ok - they found their final home. www.edgewalker.f2s.com/ubb6/tmpl_ref/

[ April 04, 2001: Message edited by: Screamer ]

Looks good... I was thinking about this today. What would be a good first step would be to have the styles template page in the cp write the font stuff (size and face) to a .css file instead of the various vars files so they could be set directly from the cp. This could be expanded to include all of the css file... then remove the calls to the font tags in the public_template files like you are working on.

That sounds like an interesting idea.. personally I was aiming for inline CSS using <STYLE>. Your idea is more sophisticated, but it requires a full-blown UBB modification whereas my work does not touch anything besides the templates.

Sounds good to me screamer.. we could work on the modification once your work has been done... it seems to me it would be easy enuf to write a simple ubb.css file from the results of the styles update. And it would be standard in the headerinsert to reference the ubb.css file...

Would seem to make a huge difference in download speed and bandwidth... this could be the beginning of really moving forward on ubb validating to w3 standards....

bumping for the new members - it will need to be updated tho

Can someone help me come up with a hack or modify the template for the daily posts summary to stick the contents that are put in the daily summary file (I wish it was actually the last x posts, rather than the newest daily ones only, which at midnight always means there's no new posts) into a flat file in addition to what it currently does, so that I can open that flat file from another script outside UBB?

It's been years since I did any serious perl coding and the code in here looks like Chinese to me right now. I'd consider a small payment if someone can do this quickly.

Please email me at kroll@wargamer.com.

Mario

Hey Allen, et al,

This is a great list; thank you so much for compiling it.

It'd also be cool to know how each template integrates with the .cgi files.

For example, how many (and what) templates does the ultimatebb.cgi file draw from?

(Psssssst ... Allen, please check your PM ... I have what I hope is a nice surprise there. )

yes it would, please submit it when done, thanks

bumping for the new peeps

another friendly bump for us Newbs that would like more