how long to install hacks?

I know that this is a very broad question, but I was wondering how long it usually takes to install hacks on people's forums. I would really love to install the Private messaging hack as well as a couple others, but I am just scared to screw something up. After I downloaded the PM hack and took a look at the first time install read me- it was very intimidating. So I was just wondering how long it takes to install hacks like this? Also, just to confirm we will have a pm hack in the next vb update right?

First, make a back up of everything, i just downloaded the whole /forum/ directory onto my hard drive...

The PM hack is the biggest hack out there, but only takes about 30 - 45 min to do, use something like cuteHTML where you can search for the text you need to replace.

Read twice, edit once. Its quite easy, and very well documented. I waited untill 3am to hack my board where if i made a big mistake, it would only be down for a few min, and nobody would be there to see it :)

Good luck!

It took me only about 30 minutes to install the PM & Poll hacks as well as a couple other minor layout hacks.

SO SIMPLE!!

I don't think any one's had a problem with the PM hack. If you don't want to install the new version (1.2.0), which has endless amounts of new features, but a ton of editing, you can still install version 0.9.x (whatever that was). There may have been some bugs left, but there's very little editing to the vB scripts involved - http://www.enter.net/~rmsullivan/pmhack.zip should work, hope I did't overwrite it :D

Anyway, before you install a hack, ensure your scripts are working, back them up!!!, and then install the hack. Ideally, you might wanna set up a test server on your home computer (Apache or PWS) and do some testing that way - that's what I do now.

HTH,

Ok, installed hack, wasn't to bad, but it shifted my profile, register,member, search, home, faq icons. (My fivelinks) Is there a way to fix this? It also has a broken gif right next to the private messages text when a user is logged in, can anyone tell me how to fix this? Here is the link to my site to see what I mean.
http://www.baddealings.com/forums/index.php

Thanks in advance

[Edited by steven on 07-25-2000 at 03:15 AM]