I made an alternative navbar and named it navbar2. On the page that I call it I used the $navbar2 in the template just like the forum does with the default navbar, but nothing shows up. Is there some other step involved in getting this to work?

Yes in I believe global.php the navbar template is being filled by php. Global.php then parses the template into $navbar.
A little fix wich could help for you is this:
Open global.php Find:
Add below that:
That should do the job if there aren't any php vars in your navbar2

thanks, I forgot about the php file.

When testing the 2nd navbar I decided to just copy/paste the original navbar into the template and I changed the $navbar to $navbar2 and I included the fetch template code you provided, but for some reason it prints 2 navbars. (only one has the drop down boxes however)

here's the php code page and here's the template codeany ideas?