This short entry is geared towards giving you some basic pointers on editing custom islands; this covers a couple very common issues that people have (either accidently removing portions of the stock code to make the island not work, or by placing their code in the wrong places, or issues in referencing php code in the html area).
Your stock custom island looks like this:
/* PHP CODE HERE, IF NECESSARY */
/* DO NOT CHANGE THE LINE BELOW */
$body = <<<EOF
EOF;
/* DO NOT CHANGE THE LINE ABOVE */
Editing it isn't too difficult, any PHP code you'd enter would go under the PHP notice; any text or HTML you'd want to show would go under the line:
And above the line:
It is very important that you don't modify these lines; by removing or "adjusting" the stock portions you will likely cause the island to no longer load (properly) and to fix when it's broke you'll either have to edit the file manually on the server (Pre 7.5) or in the database (Post 7.5).
The island itself is parsed through the smarty template engine; so when "calling" any php code in the html (body) area you won't need to use an "echo", you'd simply just reference the php such as:
/* PHP CODE HERE, IF NECESSARY */
$date = date("l, F jS Y");
/* DO NOT CHANGE THE LINE BELOW */
$body = <<<EOF
$date
EOF;
/* DO NOT CHANGE THE LINE ABOVE */
