Now trying to 'include' a Vbulletin 'forumdisplay' at the bottom of a webpage.

[krystof]

My goal is for myself and my friends to create a wide variety of websites using only 3 templates. Here are my 3 template plans.

1. A standard all-purpose web design. This template has been created as described at kwik-n-free.com/web-design/basic.php.

2. A beginner's template for instant web pages. Exactly the same template as no. 1 above, except modified so that anyone can create and edit the page while learning nothing about HTML. This template has not been created. Technically however, this needs only a series of 'includes' to template number 1 above. As soon as I find the time, this is as good as done.

3. An interactive web page with a Vbulletin 'forumdisplay' page 'included' at the bottom. The current prototype can be seen at the weblog version of this forum message you are now reading. A forum and a forum message are synchronized with a weblog.

Main forum message = main text of the weblog.
Forum discussions = 'visitor comments' at the bottom of the weblog.

Weblog version: kwik-n-free.com/web-design/templates
Forum version: starnectar.com/showthread.php?t=2

Thanks to help in several forums, most of my questions about this have now been answered as follows.

• Iframes work well for 'forumdisplay' pages. All mysteries seem to have been solved by adding: height="1000" to the iframe. The only forum modifications needed were: a. for better looks, I removed the banner from the 'header' template, b. for proper link function, I added <base="_top"> to the 'headinclude' template.
• 'PHP includes' do not work well for the remote viewing of forumdisplay pages. The basic functions of remote PHP are working after my host configured my server to "allow_url_include". However, as an 'include', a forumdisplay page is no longer in the same 'relative' position as was designed. Thus the many 'relative' link references and CSS are disconnected. Although this probably can be improved with 'global editing' of the PHP templates, for the forumdisplay this is not worth the bother, since iframes are working so well.
• However, 'PHP includes' do work well for the remote viewing of basic text. Iframes would render the main text invisible to most search engines. Fortunately, PHP includes can be used here, because including some text is not nearly so complicated as including a 'forumdisplay' page. Therefore, using remote PHP and a simple template modification: the main text of a web page = the main message of a subforum. Now anyone can maintain a super-weblog simply by 'editing' a forum message.
• Making a 'remote call' as efficient as a 'local call'? This would improve the downloading speed of all these 'remote includes', whether with PHP or with iframes. Preliminary tests suggest this is possible. However, there are those pesky 'relative references'. This is not worth the bother unless my forum traffic becomes huge... and I can afford to hire a PHP expert...

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