vBulletin LTS

Inferno External as you know, provides you with the power to export certain data in a visual format to any part of your website. Ideally this is developed around the idea that you the user, wants to display data/information from your forum, onto your main website.

Where do you begin?
The first step is really to set up a new "block", the term block will refer to a set up you've configured in your ACP to export X data, in this example we're going to walk through how you'd set up an External Users Online. The users online has is a very simple interface, for users and guests.

To begin, go to your Admin CP, then 'Inferno External', and on this page you want to click 'Create New Block'. First you will see a drop down menu to choose what kind of block you want to create, select 'Users Online' here then hit 'Proceed'.

The next page takes you to the block configuration, now this block has a few custom options, you can decide what types of online data you wish to display (members, guests and hidden), additionally you can hide UGs from being counted here. There is also the default configuration which you get with all blocks:

Block ID
The block ID is an alphanumeric reference to the block you are creating, it can contain characters a-z, 0-9 and underscores (_). For this example, simply input 'my_users_online', which is a fairly useful ID to give this block.

Viewing Permissions
The viewing permissions is a global setting for all blocks, allowing you to create blocks that can be viewed by certain usergroups, or every usergroup. Don't touch this setting, for our example we want all usergroups to see our new block.

That's it for configuration, you'll find other blocks will have more settings depending on what they are, allowing you to customise them, remember aswell that you can create several blocks of the same type!

Hit 'Save Module Block' and this block will then be saved, and you'll be sent back to the main Inferno External admin page. Here, you should see your newly created block, and we can take a peak too, so click on 'Preview' for your newly created block.

The preview page will give you two things, one is the code you'd need to display this block on any page on your website, and secondly how the block will look. Note that how the block looks will differ, as it depends really on your websites style/css. In the preview here you'll be able to see the users online, all simple.

Hit 'Go Back' to return to the main admin page again, this time click 'Block Templates'. Inferno External employs an ITS ("Independant Template System"). This allows you to create a block, customise the templates for that block, and not have it affect any other block, even of the same types. So for example, if you have two user online blocks, and changed the templates on one of them, it would not effect the other!

If you want to in the future, you can come back to this page and change the templates as you see fit, if you ever make a mistake, simply leave the template blank and it will return to default.

Cool, I have my block, how can I put it on my website?
This is the main part of the system, putting blocks on your website. Firstly, you're website will need to be in php (don't panic!).

What if my site isn't PHP, but HTML?
Not to worry, let's say you have your main site file as 'index.htm' or 'index.html', simply rename the file to 'index.php' and your server will treat this file as php, and still parse your html!

Cool, it's php now, where do I begin?
You need to begin by 'loading' Inferno External into your website, to do this, open say index.php, or any other file on your website that's php and which you want to test (you could even create a test.php if you wish). At the very top of the file insert the following code:

Code:

<?php
require_once('./MYFORUM/infernoexternal.php');
?>

Please Note! You will need to alter this slightly, notice the 'MYFORUM' part, this needs changing to your forums directory, and assumes the file you're editing is one level above your forum directory. If that made little sense, not to worry!

Let's say your website is: mysite.com, and your forum is: mysite.com/forums/, and you're editing 'mysite.com/index.php', you'd use the following code:

Code:

<?php
require_once('./forums/infernoexternal.php');
?>

Another note, once this has been included in your PHP file once, you do not need to insert the code again, while it won't do any harm, it won't do anything either, this only needs to be at the top of your php files.

Okay, that's done, how do I display my cool new block?
You'll need to enter another peice of code to actually display the block, and that code is the one you saw when you previewed the block earlier in the acp, so run back there and copy that code. Now where-ever you want the block to display, place the code:

Code:

<?php echo $infernoexternal->display_block('my_users_online'); ?>

Two things to note here, one is the code I just showed has 'echo ', which the code in the preview doesn't, this command tells php to spit out whatever comes next to the page. If you know a bit about PHP, then you'll be able to tell this function returns the HTML rather than forcefully spitting out when called, so you can use it in other ways rather than just echo. Additionally there are the PHP tags, which are needed so the system parses this as PHP and not HTML/plain-text.

The second thing to note, is the 'my_users_online', and if you're asking yourself "I remember that from somewhere", then yes you do, it's the Block ID you gave to your block. So this is telling the system which block you want displaying.

Now that's done, save your file, upload, and you should see the block nicely sitting on your website where you told it to be, that easy!. You can now manage your block in your admin cp without having to come back to the code and modify it. I should point out that if you delete the block and you don't update the code on your website, your website will return an error message, so if you ever want rid of a block, it's better practice to update your files and strip the code which displays the block, before actually deleting it from the Inferno External admin cp.

Nice, my own block, that was easy!
Very much so!

If you have questions, issues, problems, or anything related, feel free to post and we'll take a look!