Beginners guide to vB modding?

[JarkkoL]

Hi,

Is there some beginners guide to vB modding I could check out? I would like to get good idea how templates and php tie together, how you are supposed to make your own modifications to vB and everything else I need to be aware of. I have fair amount of programming experience (C++) but php & vB are new beasts to me. I would like to implement something quite simple, but need at least some info how data is passed between templates & php, how to structure things so that my mods are not overwritten by upgrades, etc.

Thanks, Jarkko

[Lynne]

The best thing to do is download some simple mods and see how they work. Then try writing your own and see how things go. If you have an idea of what you want to do, then try to download a mod that is similar to what you want.

[JarkkoL]

Ok, I would have much more preferred some tutorial though than reverse engineering how things work from existing mods (:

[Lynne]

Well, after you figure it out, perhaps you can write a tutorial to share? I think it's just one of those things that nobody has tried to tackle yet.

[winstone]

just in case if anyone decides to start a tutorial/guide, following is an excellent example
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/

IMO vb.org or perhaps vb.com staff should really do something similar to above to help modders and boost quantity and quality of addons

[JarkkoL]

Even if I was competent enough and had the free time to write a tutorial, I think I'm too much of a capitalist to write a basic level of documentation as a donation for a commercial product I'm paying for ;) Anyway, after hours of probing I was able to figure it out and thanks for your time.

[ragtek]

Even if I was competent enough and had the free time to write a tutorial, I think I'm too much of a capitalist to write a basic level of documentation as a donation for a commercial product I'm paying for ;) Anyway, after hours of probing I was able to figure it out and thanks for your time.

lol

so if everybody of us would be a capitalist like you, vbulletin.org wouldn't exist, because nobody would share his add-ons for free.....

i'm very happy that it's not like this

[JarkkoL]

Everyone has different motivations to share their work. Some do it for fun, some to learn themselves, some to market their experience, some just to get pat on the back for good work and from need to belong to community. If you get sustained living from writing add-ons just for sake of sharing them here for free, good for you, but as I have seen people who share their add-ons write them for their own purposes and just share the work with little of extra work. It's totally different from doing the work solely for the purpose of sharing it here, but you could show us a good example and do as you preach and write the doc, right? ;)

Anyway, personally I would be surprised if vbulletin.org running ad-free and adding plenty of extra value to the product wouldn't get any cut from vB sales or otherwise benefit financially from the product, or that Lynne for example who's providing plenty of support for the product would be just donating her time for free and helping people here with just pure sweat equity. It doesn't make business sense to me, but like I said, I guess I'm too much of a capitalist and actually have to get paid for my time to pay my rent ;)

[Lynne]

Anyway, personally I would be surprised if vbulletin.org running ad-free and adding plenty of extra value to the product wouldn't get any cut from vB sales or otherwise benefit financially from the product, or that Lynne for example who's providing plenty of support for the product would be just donating her time for free and helping people here with just pure sweat equity. It doesn't make business sense to me, but like I said, I guess I'm too much of a capitalist and actually have to get paid for my time to pay my rent ;)
I spend hours here every week and don't get paid a single cent. None of the mods/admins on vb.org get paid - we are all volunteers. I can't speak for others, but I do it because I learn a lot by helping others and I just enjoy it and I enjoy the other users here.