I have helped with a few projects in the past couple years which have used the Smarty template engine as a backbone for their template/presentation framework. It is really useful in projects and scripts because it keeps the PHP code separate from the design of the website. You can read a detailed overview of Smarty at the official website.

Like I stated before, I have helped troubleshoot/design for projects using the technology, but I never really sat down to learn more about Smarty, but today I found some time to continue development on my phpZIPdir project (which I have not touched since the initial code write), so I decided it is time to get Smarty integrated so the product can finally get to its public beta testing stage. I fiddled around with the setup for a couple hours and read the documentation to get myself started. Through quite a bit of trial and error, I have successfully integrated Smarty into about 65% of the phpZIPdir project thus far. Once you get the hang of the syntax it is really easy to move forward.

Once I finish phpZIPdir I will open it up for a public beta, and hopefully I will find a few good testers. I will post more about it when the time comes. I urge anyone interested to in phpZIPdir to take a look at The Gutter Directory to see the latest version in action (with Smarty 65% integrated -although you will not really be able to tell from the front end!). I would like some feedback on it if possible!