On a multi-blog environment the private templates should be hosted all in a common directory but they should be hosted on each blog's template directory. So I propose that the code...
// First check to see if the template is in the custom template folder.
if (is_dir(WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/connections_templates'))
{
if (file_exists(WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/connections_templates/' . $atts['template_name'] . '.php'))
{
$template = WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/connections_templates/' . $atts['template_name'] . '.php';
}
}
... should be replaced by...
// First check to see if the template is in the theme's folder.
if (file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . $atts['template_name'] . '.php'))
{
$template = TEMPLATEPATH . $atts['template_name'] . '.php';
}