How do I do EVERYTHING?

[donottumbledry]

I'm a newbie.

I have a VERY ambitious goal in creating a new website for an online community. The brief I have been given is fairly specific and we are going to create something that hasn't really been seen before.

For this to happen though I'm going to have to rip apart vBulletin + CMS and make it do stuff it probably wasn't originally intended to do. Now this might seem harsh and a bit of a backwards-way of doing things but I have my reasons - primarily because this community already has an extensive forum running on VB 3.6.8 so it's what both users and admin are used to.

I need to know how everything works - how I style things, how the pages are 'built', how the PHP code executes things and what classes the software utilises to make things happen. I need to understand the workings of 'hooks' and how to use them I also need to understand what stylevars are and how they differ from editing a CSS file(s). I need to know (intimately) how VB communicates with the database and how data is stored/retrieved. I need to be able to manipulate all these different aspects to pull together a dynamic and exciting website that will be customisable to each user and that will allow the community to interact better with each other - both on an individual basis and with the wider world.

I am not trying to create a social blogging space - this website will feature no blogs. However it will focus heavily on the forums and integrated CMS pages that will deliver static content. Some of this static content MUST be integrated with usergroups to prevent guests etc from browsing areas of the website - I know this is easily done when creating pages, though.

I also need to understand how widgets work and how I create them. There are aspects of the forum (information, users, threads, posts, etc) that I will need to pull from the database and display in my own widgets. These widgets must have dynamic positioning and must not be a 'stuck' in one place wherever AdminCP sets them but wherever (within reason) on the page the USER wants them.

I am not asking for you to spoon-feed me here, but tell me where the frikin' manual is! Even better - has anyone written their own guides and manuals? I always find that third-party manuals or guides offer far more insight and instruction that the vendors can ever produce.

I have asked detailed questions both here and on vbulletin.com but I think the questioning has perhaps gone over some peoples heads. I am asking a lot - and I expect a lot from VB, but I need help in making it happen.

Thanks!

[kall]

I need to know how everything works.

1. Read every article here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=242
2. Then spend a year or 2 playing with the code.

[donottumbledry]

Originally Posted by kall

1. Read every article here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=242
2. Then spend a year or 2 playing with the code.

Thanks!

I'm a quick learner

Any one else with other guides out there? The more the merrier!