Admin questions

[krot]

Hi:

I'd like to use your forum system for my business. It would be moderated by experts in several related fields, each with their own 'sub-forum', and accessible only through our one web site.

The admin should be able to restrict the users to one or more sub-forums, restrict which users may communicate with each other (other than by the forum questions of course), and limit access to the member's lists. Also, we would like the forum to be able to show picture files from posts and replies.

The moderators should be able to remove inappropriate posts and replies.

We may hack the system to fit our special needs and style. (We use PHP and MySQL for our web site and have member data there which we may want to access to provide answers - but we don't want all other users to see this private data, thus our need to control who may message/access each other).

1. From your features list, am I correct in reading that this system can do all these things without hacks?
2. Would this be 1 licence?
3. We can apply updates from vBulletin, but we have to re-apply our hacks and ensure they work?
4. We would not have any tech support from vBulletin due to our hacks?
5. Is there any way to very quickly apply the hacks to the updates, rather than the usual cut and paste?

Thanks.

[Vega]

1. Not sure, if you'll be able to restrict the access via private messages. If you don't want certain groups to communicate with each other, you would then need to allow only one group to use private messages.
2. If I get that right that you'd only use vB on one site - Yes.
3. True. Note that Hacks aren't officially supported.
4. You could ask for help via the forums. I think you won't get any tech support via the support tickets.
5. Did you read the 3.5 announcement? Maybe the plugin system is something for you. Apart from that, I don't know about any other ways.

[Zachery]

1. You will be able to do the greater majority of what you want without code modifications.
2. Yes, I believe so unless there is omething you left out.
3. Yes, you would need to re-modify the code to update.
4. We cannot support modifications to the stock code, but generally we will try to see if it is caused by hacks first before sending you away. If we can't duplicate the problem on an unhacked board, it must be the extra code.
5. Aside from the plugin system, you could use diff programs like beyond compare and keep a list of files changed.

[krot]

Thanks guys.

A lot of mention is made of the 'plugin system'. Where can I get more detailed info on this and perhaps see examples, since is seems it may be core to our hacking work?

[Onimua]

The only real amount of information on the plugin system is in the 3.5 Announcement that Vega pointed oout. Not sure of any other places that give detailed information on it...

[feldon23]

Previously, if you wanted to add functionality to vB, you started by adding or changing things in templates. If you needed to display information that was not previously available, such as the # of unread forum posts on the forum home page, you had to add or modify PHP files.

Pretty soon, you end up with so many changes to templates and PHP files that it is difficult to move forward from one version of vBulletin to the next because you have to reapply/synchronize all your changes.

What the Plugin system is intended to do is to allow 3rd party developers to add functionality to vB which can be removed with a mouseclick. The PHP code that makes up vBulletin has been updated to use classes and objects which can be extended with "hooks". Much less (or no) editing of PHP files to add substantial functionality to our forums!

vB3.5 Beta 1 which adds this functionality was released about a week ago and people are just starting to get a feel for what is and is not possible with the new system. The system may be improved before vBulletin 3.5 final is released. Very exciting!

[krot]

Ok. Now I understand! Classes and objects - excellent! So the application as developed by vB is updated, and all we have to do is direct it to our hacks as designed before the update, given that we use classes and objects also. Depending on the extent of the hacks of course. Thus they are called plugins. Makes sense. I'm glad you're using object oriented scripting now.
I'll check out the demo to see if it's close to what I need.
Thanks for the explanation!

btw, for anyone interested, I found the book 'PHP and MySQL Web Development' Second Edition by Welling & Thomson really good to understand object oriented scripting. (Hope it's ok to mention books here?)