I own several websites that are link directories. Most of them are run on the phpLD Link Directory script. One of the more challenging parts of maintaining and getting these directories going is dealing with Smarty. Before I knew any better, I would get frustrated when trying to add code, then not seeing the end result on the page displayed.
Smarty does weird things, as I’m still learning and understanding.
A prime example of this is adding Adsense code to template files. I was attempting to add Adsense code to one of my templates, and I simply added my Adsense code.
The result was not what I planned. The ads displayed, but were not correct as shown here.(Image at 75% scale)

The ad just didn’t look right, and it seems as though the “ads by Google” text was missing.
After doing some investigating, I learned that I had to add “literal” tags around the code as such:
{literal}
Adsense code
{/literal}
This was much better, as it produced the desired ad:

I still run across confusion when I attempt to do other things similar, and still cannot figure them out. These are growing pains, I’m sure as I will eventually grow out of them.