Tiki uses the Smarty Template Engine to control themes (mostly the layout, and some design / layout logic).
"One of Smarty's primary design goals is to facilitate the separation of application code from presentation. Typically, the application code contains the business logic of your application, written and maintained in PHP code. This code is maintained by programmers. The presentation is the way your content is presented to the end user, which is written and maintained in template files. The Templates are maintained by template designers."
http://www.smarty.net/whyuse.php
Smarty is a "Template/Presentation Framework." It provides the designer with the opportunity to change the presentation of a website by defining variables and using logic (If/else) statements. It can be used for example to create WYSIWYCA ("what you see is what you can access") websites which show or hide things depending on permissions variables.
The default Smarty template files are in the folder /Templates as .tpl files. They can be edited with any text editor, but it is best to not edit the default version of these templates.
See Themes ("How To Create a Custom Theme") for more details.
When modifying templates, it is important to check that variables that display output on screen be escaped except in certain circumstances, to act as a safeguard agains unfiltered user input being displayed back on the page. The question is when to escape and when not to escape? See http://www.smarty.net/docs/en/language.modifier.escape.tpl
The wiki plugin group can be used the same way if you need to set it without an alternative to the condition ({else})
{wikiplugin _name='group' groups='Admins'} I’m a member of the admins group {/wikiplugin}
However using {ELSE} like you would in the wiki syntax will break the code.
In that case of an alternative to a condition you need to write the condition as follow:
{if 'Admins'|in_group} I’m a member of the admins group {else} I’m not a member of the admins group {/if}
|number_formatin a smarty template on a formatted field from a pluginList. IE:
{$row.prix|number_format}
{$row.tracker_field_catalogueDesBiensPRIX|number_format}
With {$smarty.get.urlParameter} is possible to use an URL parameter directly into your smarty template.
IE: Using a list plugin you generate your URL with an URL parameter like:
<a href="holidays-camps-childrenList?holiday={$row.tracker_field_holidaysReference}">that will generate
https://yourTiki.com/holidays-camps-childrenList?holidayReference=Christmas
In your smarty template you can reuse then the value to display it or embed a second wikiplugin list
{filter field="tracker_field_holidaycampsNameReference" exact="{/literal}{$smarty.get.holiday}{literal}"}
You can use the selected language to control what is displayed or used in embedded wikiplugin (like an embedded wikiplugin List)
{if $prefs.language eq fr}Montre ca {else} Show this {/if}