how'd yall get so good and who do you thinks the best on here?
 

i mean damn, some of yall have extreme talent with coding, and hacking..everything. ive seen convos on here i had no clue what you meant. how did yall go about learning this stuff? and whos the best on vb.org? just curious to how yall do this stuff...for future reference. ya know? cause i own the newest vb version, and im very new to this stuff and know hardly anything about html, sql and all that mess....lol. everyone respond!!!!

I learnt everything I know via my ACP and breaking things, or via viewing other peoples releases.

so, basically your self taught? thats awesome...

pretty much, along with my trusty HTML book and google.

The best people on this site are the active master coders like PaulM and amykhar IMO

I never knew anything about html, PHP or SQL before I started hacking vb (actually I still know nothing about PHP or SQL ^_^ ).

Developing and tweaking one's site and installing hacks you learn a lot of skills :)

shit, at least yall dont have to worry about much when something goes wrong with your sites or anything. id have to run here. yall would be like...*an error for sql dialogued blah blah* and hmm...fix it doing this and this...id be like wtf?!??! lol.

and what books or websites would you recommend for me to look on how to do this kind of stuff?

^ Practice makes perfect. Whenever you have a problem (this is what I do) look through the thread you got the hack from and nine times out of ten someone else has had that same problem... Here's an example, I updated the journal on my site when I went to 3.5 and added emotion smilies to it... I decided after words to delete them and kept getting an error... I went into my database, looked at things, and then looked at the thread I got the hack from. I figured out the author added a code to each area and it had a variable for those that use prefixes... That must have been the problem because I use prefixes.. Later I found out where the author forgot to add that variable to the emos and my problem was solved... So my point is practice and you will start to understand things...
;)

My rule of thumb is too, I never add mods when they first come out... There are bound to be errors and cause you a headache... I mark it for future use then if people are installing it well I try it out. :) Also, only add what you really really want on your site.. A lot of people go overboard and the next thing you know they are overloading the server or just not using the extra "goodies" ad your site grows add things and see if people like them..

That's just my 2 cents..

Learn by doing - it's the only way IMO.

lol, sounds good man. ill just run to you and have you help me solve the problem, kinda guide me threw it. :D lol. i would love to learn this stuff, so i dont bother yall all the time. lol

my only problem is, i dunno where to start. otherwise, id spread my wings.

I'm suprised too at some of the skill here. :)

As for the best? I don't know every coder on this forum but I have to say Xenon/Brad/Marco have been very good at creating some pretty complicated modifications. But there's too many good coders around here to name probably.