Question about debug mode
 

I've read many times that you should "NEVER EVER EVER run your forum in debug mode!!!".

Okay -- why not? Of course I'm sure it increases server loading a little and bandwidth usage a little and puts that table at the bottom of the page, but aside from that is there any problem? I don't plan on keeping it in debug mode all the time but if you want to transfer some templates up to MASTER STYLE surely it can't hurt to run debug for a fraction of an hour.

I could shut the forum down but it all seems unnecessary.

That's a good question, I'm not sure why it's considered such a bad idea other than for performance reasons. The only thing I can think of is that it does display all the db query details, which might help out someone trying to hack the site.

You might be interested in this: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=265999 for ways of enabling debug mode only for yourself. Another way around it (the way I've always done it), is to have a test site set up in debug mode and transfer things to the live site once they're working.

Thanks for the link. I used the IP address method.

I'm working on tidying up a product I'm preparing to post here. I started it on my dev site but I've changed so much of it on the main site that I thought it would be easier to get the templates on MASTERS STYLE there and export it than move all the changes back to the dev site.

The author of the thread you cited also suggested the debug table displayed too much critical information but it seems to me any hacker would still need to know a lot about vBulletin to make any use of it. If he had a copy of the vB software he would already know everything shown in the debug table anyway.

But I'm glad I can set things so only I can see the table so I don't have to answer the inevitable question about it in my comments forum.

Thanks again for the help.