[Andreas]

This work might be useless, and it might be difficult to understand it - but I wanted to give it a shot at least

We all know that is is difficult (and in most cases not possible) to modify queries through Plugins.
IMHO this is a major problem for many hacks, and thus they will rely on file edits.

Therefore, my idea was to create a Query Class to be able to manipulate queries.
I did that ... but the class isn't fully implemented yet, nor optimized or anything.
Consider it proof-of-concept code or a tech-demo.

I took forumdisplay.php as an example and replaced all queries with this class.
As there are many changes the instructions would become quite long and complicated, therefore I just created a unified diff file you can apply to an unmodified vBulletin 3.5.0 Beta 1 forumdisplay.php

"Installation instructions"

Upload class_query.php to folder includes.

Execute

patch<forumdisplay.patch

Note: I have included a Windows port of GNU patch, the full package can be found at http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

Then upload the patched forumdisplay.php

In order to use the new Hooks, you must add the following entries to hooktype forumdisplay in file includes/xml/hooks_vbulletin.xml:

<hook>query_forumread_update</hook>
<hook>query_forumusers</hook>
<hook>query_announcements</hook>
<hook>query_threadscount</hook>
<hook>query_stickies</hook>
<hook>query_getthreadids</hook>
<hook>query_threads</hook>

Let me know what you think