Installing an accessory
Development and Programming
Not sure why this is so baffling… I’ve tried every way I know to install the Template Variables accessory and I can’t make it work.
Can somebody explain to me how to install this third party accessory?
I have read the support documents on accessories and still am unable to figure it out. Maybe it is confusing how this accessory is packaged or something, but I’m growing frustrated and decided to seek help. Thanks.
It’s packaged to match certain parts of the EE directory structure. When you unzip it you get 2 folders: themes and third_party.
Open up third_party, grab the template_variables folder, and drop it into system/expressionengine/third_party. That’s all most accessories need - if you go to addons > accessories in your cp, you’ll see it show up in the list. Hit install and it’ll appear at the bottom of the control panel.
This accessory uses some custom theme files, so for now it still looks a little funny. Open up the themes folder it ships with, go into third_party, grab the template_variables folder and drop it into EE’s themes/third_party folder. Refresh the cp, and the accessory should show up with all the styling applied.
Does that help?
Thanks. Here is the message I get when I attempt to bring up the accessories manager after installing the ‘template_variables’ folder in the ‘third_party’ directory:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in C:\Inetpub\vhosts\georgiastatedar.org\subdomains\members\httpdocs\system\expressionengine\third_party\template_variables\acc.template_variables.php on line 178
This has been the problem for me from the beginning so I just assumed I wasn’t doing something right.
Looks like your host is still on PHP 4. A quick fix is to remove the “private” keywords in front of the functions in that file.
You may have an option in your hosting control panel to switch to PHP 5, if not I would highly recommend talking to your host about upgrading to PHP 5.
Thank you! That fixed it.
I’ll look into trying to upgrade to PHP5.