I got frustrated that the vBulletin template system limited me in this way so... I wrote a hack around it.
Just use <? <?php <?= as you would normally in the templates.
I'd like to see PHP based templates in the future, vBulletin! <if> is useless if I can just type <? if ?> !
Things to Remember
You cannot break up PHP blocks.
<? if (0): ?>
Hello!!!
<? endif ?>
will not work, and you'll get a nice error message about how it didn't. If it's really a concern for anyone, I can try to get it working. In my opinion, that's not a big deal. I think PHP support sans breaking up blocks in 10 lines of hack code is pretty nice, myself.
That's a limitation of eval anyway
Variables aren't always the same in PHP mode!
While you can use $vboptions[bbtitle] in your main code and get it working, vBulletin is doing behind the scenes voodoo on stuff.
To access $vboptions[x]: $GLOBALS['vbulletin']->options['x']
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