Using tags when user updates db so info appears

[ade234uk]

I have seen on Wordpress how you can insert tags in to your blogs so that say a form appears or other information in your blog.

So for example the tag
[contact_us_form]
would show a contact us form

The tag
[display_newest_users]
displays the 10 newest users to the site.

How does this tag system work?

I am interesting in putting together a home page builder, so that you can create your own website and insert tags where you want information to be displayed in the pages. The information is pulled from MySQL.

Thanks
Adrian

[NogDog]

[man]str_replace[/man] would be a likely means.

[ade234uk]

I will look in to this.

So basically if someone inserts [apples] in to the database, when it is pulled from mysql I can convert the text to a variable and check for [apples]

If this appears then [apples] = apple.gif

So it would display an apple