vBulletin Manual - Replacement Variables

Replacement Variables are chunks of text that will be replaced with alternative text by the system before being displayed on screen.

Their uses are many and when used correctly they can be very powerful. A common use for replacement variables is to correct annoying spelling mistakes. For example, on the vBulletin Community Forums a replacement variable exists to replace all instances of the incorrect abbreviation for vBulletin VBB with the correct abbreviation vB.

Another use for replacement variables is to insert commonly-used blocks of HTML. For example, a replacement variable could be set up to replace <tablestart> with <table class="tborder" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="1" border="0" width="100%" align="center">.

Therefore, your templates could have blocks of code like this:

<tablestart>
<tr>
    <td class="alt1">Cell contents...</td>
</tr>
</table>

And before being displayed in a visitor's browser, the replacement variable system would identify the <tablestart> replacement variable and replace it accordingly, resulting in this:

<table class="tborder" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="1" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
<tr>
    <td class="alt1">Cell contents...</td>
</tr>
</table>

Replacement variables in vBulletin 3 are case insensitive meaning that a replacement variable set to search for word will also match Word, wOrD and WORD etc.

The replacement variable system is activated in the last stages of page processing before the HTML is delivered to a visitor's browser. The system searches for target text in the completed, parsed templates. In some ways this can be very useful, but there are caveats of which you should be aware.

Warning:

While powerful, replacement variables can also break the functionality of your board if used incorrectly.

For example, creating a replacement variable to search for 'html' and replace it with 'HTML', any hyperlinks pointing to files with a .html suffix will have those links replaced with .HTML, which is not the same file as far as Unix web servers are concerned.

Worse still, you might choose to use a replacement variable to turn every instance of the word home into a hyperlink pointing to your home page: <a href="home.html">home</a>.

While this will work, you will have the situation where the word 'home' is used in locations where creating a hyperlink would cause invalid HTML, such as this:

<img src="home.gif" alt="" />

...which would end up being delivered to the browser as

<img src="<a href="home.html">home</a>.gif" alt="" />

...which is obviously invalid HTML and will not function correctly.