[Carnage]

setting it (site name/url/contact details) changes whole vbulletins default domain. help? i want to open home with domain.com and forums with subdomain

You need to change the setting in the friendly url settings. If you change the setting for threads to http://forums.domain.com/threads and the forums friendly url to http://forums.domain.com/index.php it should work.

not if you modify the db query that gets the thread data

The problem isn't that the data isn't avalaible anywhere, its that its not avaliable within the part of the code that forms the url. I've been experimenting, I've managed to save and retrieve the data in most important places (eg forum display, forum home, thread display etc) but not everywhere. It needs a bit more work yet still leaves some dead urls around the place... (vb's fault for not using {vb:link ...} everywhere a link is made)

I know it's a lot of work and there are other ways to do it as well, maybe by checking all the cached templates and rewriting all matched urls is easier, in any case i'll defiantly do this or might give up n go with vbseo even tho its a rip off (IMO)

vbSeo does a few thigns this can't, but most people jsut want customisable urls, so for them it is a rip off. Rewriting templates or output is one way to do it but its ugly, bug prone and inefficient.

Coder

You are marked on here as a coder, so I assume this means you've release at least one mod implying that you understand php. I'll upload the code i've been working on for threads and you can give it a go, be aware though, you will need to create your own rewrite rules and edit the code to change the url structure.