Ok I worked out the bugs. Hopefully this information will help other folks that want to install Smarty on Windows. I wish I had this info when I started, the documentation is geared towards *nix and is confusing but it was a good learning experience. (Thanks to boots for making the whole 'templates' folder click in my head) Hopefully, Monte or the Smarty folks will include this info on their web or more importantly in the installation documentation in the Smarty download. John ----------------------------------------------- Installing Smarty in Windows This document assumes that your webserver and php5 is running. Download Smarty - http://smarty.php.net Installation - Windows, IIS/Apache, PHP5 Extract files, rename Smarty.x.x.x to smarty (suggest OUTSIDE of your www root!) Example: d:\smarty Run phpinfo.php to find out your php.ini location Edit php.ini's include_path and add the location of the libs folder. example: include_path = ".;d:\smarty\libs" Restart IIS/Apache Setup these two folders INSIDE your www root: (wwwroot)/smarty/templates (this is where your templates will go) (wwwroot)/smarty/configs Setup these two folders OUTSIDE of your www root: d:/smarty/templates_c d:/smarty/cache Setup security settings for the webserver to write to these four folders In (wwwroot) create index.php and in (wwwroot)/smarty/templates/index.tpl with the following code: index.php: <?php // load Smarty library require('Smarty.class.php'); $smarty = new Smarty; $smarty->template_dir = 'd:/inetpub/wwwroot/smarty/templates'; $smarty->config_dir = ' d:/inetpub/wwwroot/smarty/config'; $smarty->cache_dir = 'd:/smarty/smarty_cache'; $smarty->compile_dir = 'd:/smarty/smarty_templates_c'; $smarty->assign('name','fish boy!'); $smarty->display('index.tpl'); ?> index.tpl <html> <body> Hello, {$name}! </body> </html> Now open index.php in your web browser (requested from your webserver) http://webserver/index.php You can work this out to a referenced script/class: smarty_connect.php: <?php // load Smarty library require('Smarty.class.php'); class smarty_connect extends Smarty { function smarty_connect() { // Class Constructor. // These automatically get set with each new instance. $this->Smarty(); $this->template_dir = ' d:/inetpub/wwwroot/smarty/templates'; $this->config_dir = ' d:/inetpub/wwwroot/smarty/config'; $this->compile_dir = 'd:/smarty/templates_c'; $this->cache_dir = 'd:/smarty/cache'; $this->assign('app_name', 'Intranet'); } } ?> index.php: <?php require('smarty_connect.php'); $smarty = new smarty_connect; $smarty->assign('name','Ned'); $smarty->display('index.tpl'); ?> index.tpl: <html> <body> Hello, {$name}! </body> </html> If you are getting an error that Smarty.class.php isn't found chances are that your include_path isn't correct or you didn't edit the one that the webserver is using, check your phpinfo.php!