Popup Script............
 

Anybody know of a way using php smarty tags or any other way besides j a v a scrip t ?

j-scrp can not connect to a database.

Your fucked.

You could possibly pass a few variables, but for the most part Jscrip is static.
Exceptions are cookies.

I've seen some groovey DHTML shit quite a few years back..I imagine that'll still work :)

PHP is serverside only, you would always need something like hahahahahahahahahaha to make client side popups.