That looks like Smarty to me. Smarty is a template parser written in PHP. You can read up on how to use Smarty in the documentation. If you can’t get access to the CMS’s source: To view the templates in your browser, just look at what variables Smarty is using and create a PHP file … Read more
Yes, as you said, if you don’t force yourself to use a templating engine inside PHP ( the templating engine ) it becomes easy to slip and stop separating concerns. However, the same people who have problems separating concerns end up generating HTML and feeding it to smarty, or executing PHP code in Smarty, so … Read more
The problem isn’t with the $name variable but rather with the $_engine variable. It’s currently empty. You need to verify that the path specification to Smarty.class.php is correct. You might try this to begin your debugging: $this->_engine = new Smarty(); print_r($this->_engine); If it turns out that $_engine is correct at that stage then verify that … Read more