[webjocky]

Originally Posted by Dead Eddie

I don't fully understand the use case

As a vB user, you can set your avatar. For my forum, I don't need users to have different avatars and prefer to set them en masse via usergroups. Each usergroup will be assigned a different avatar.

Originally Posted by Dead Eddie

but remember that you can pull any bit of data you want into a template by making direct API calls in vbulletin 5. You don't need to have the data ready before you start rendering the template.

If vB5 had adequate documentation for using the API instead of having to dig through the code, I (along with many many others) could probably accomplish anything I needed without having to post here. As I stated above, the data required for this is not in the database to begin with. There's a field (groupid) for it in the proper table (node), but the field is full of NULL values by default. If you're talking about something else, please elaborate.

Originally Posted by Dead Eddie

For something like this, it'd probably require an additional query per post (not sure if that's a deal breaker or not).

I am making zero additional database calls per post. The hacks above works just fine for my purpose without such.

Originally Posted by Dead Eddie

It'd also save manual file edits.

Your point here is not clear. How will additional database calls save manual file edits?

Originally Posted by Dead Eddie

I'm also curious why the user group needs to be attached to the node. Do you want it to stay static in case the user's user group changes?

vBulletin forums ACL is driven by usergroups. I have specific needs that require the ability to give different options or show different things per post - based on the post author's usergroup. I imagine I'll have to update user posts when a usergroup is changed so that the usergroupid does not stay static.
Obviously somebody at vBulletin Solutions thought this was a good idea at one point, otherwise why would the database field exist in the node table?

I hope that clarifies what i'm trying to do, why I need to do it, and how I'm attempting to accomplish it. If there's a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, I'm all ears!

(I still haven't found the file that controls Private Message node creation. Any ideas?)