VB Plugins - Good Coding practices

[Calash]

Is there any good resource for the best practices when writing plugins?

I have written a few for my personal site so far, however I would like to get into the practice of using the available VB functions when doing this.

For example, here is a snip of code

$content = "";

$query = "SELECT title, sid, summary, username, rid, unix_timestamp(updated) from fanfiction_stories as s,vb_user as a WHERE a.userid = s.uid AND s.validated > 0 AND s.uid = $userinfo[userid] ORDER BY updated DESC";
$results = mysql_query($query)  or die(_FATALERROR."Query: ".$query."<br />Error: (".mysql_errno( ).")");

while($story = mysql_fetch_array($results)) {
    $content .="$story[title] By $story[username]<br />";
} 

if ($content<>"")
{
$efic_mystory = $content;
} else {
$efic_mystory = "No Stories";
}

Now, I know there is probably a better way to do the DB call using vB functions.

Just small stuff like that....if there is a good reference around somewhere it would save me a lot of questions here

Thanks