bitfields & custom options?

[Deviation]

Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction on this.

I'd like to create some custom settings for one of my extensions. I need to be able to set these via the admin cp and read them from the forum.

I see that I can manually run a SQL query to add a settinggroup and setting(s) to the db. That seems to work after rebuilding the bitfields.

Here's my questions:
1. Is this the 'right' way to handle this? Better method?
2. So what's the purpose of the bitfield_xxx.xml file that gets uploaded to the includes/xml directory? There isn't much info on the XML file in the manual ( http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/bitfield_xml ) on bitfield_xxx.xml files. From what's there, it looks like you have to use the XML file AND modify the corresponding database? Is that right?

All I could find was related to user-group permissions. I'm still combing through the bitfield_vbulletin.xml file though. I'm just concerned with settings at this point. UGP isn't a concern yet.

Thanks! :rambo: