I finally got around to overhauling my personal site (linked in my profile here). It doesn't really have any dynamic content, but I wanted to convert it from static HTML pages to PHP-scripting to make it simpler and easier to maintain.

Xoops-ing it would have been overkill, but I decided to try using Smarty to handle the presentation, partly to force me to learn more about Smarty. I used the latest stable version of Smarty, 2.6.1. (Xoops uses 2.5.0)

The experiment was a success. I did learn a lot more about Smarty, and I think the result will be easier to maintain.

Looking good there buddy

I've used Smarty in a little project of my own.

It started out as a personal calendar script complete with user authentication etc. but I brought in more and more items from XOOPS when I built on top of it to accomodate my needs for my company's website (http://www.web-udvikling.dk)

The result I call CompanyWeb, but might as well be called XoopsLite since it uses a modified phpmailer taken from XOOPS (where it was in turn taken from an OS script) as well as the whole block structure and XoopsForm classes.
With some very minor changes, XOOPS themes work with CompanyWeb.

During the process, I learned a lot about how Smarty works and what you can do about it - and I haven't even gone into saving templates in the database yet.
Great work Kazu & Co. on getting Smarty so much into XOOPS that it is so seamlessly integrated that people may even think that Smarty is a part of XOOPS