Auteur/autrice : Jean-Pierre Michaud

Why? to test them?… hum, nope!

vbEnhancer.com have a demo engine where you can test all the products released here. You can play with most of the features, and the hidden things are the admin panel, which is not always representative of the tool itself.

The goal here is to provide professional support for professional products. Having to support free versions for the products here would mean we loose all our time with clients that have problems with these free versions.

So if you want free addons, you are welcome to visit vBulletin.org Forum – The Official vBulletin Resource!

I’m almost complete with the base engine so I thought I would right a quick tutorial of how to make addons for it.

First File Structure
Files need to be named
class_mtf_(addon name).php
The (addon name) must be replaced by the id of the addon in the forum manager.

Second the File
Ok here is an example addon:
[PHP]< ?php
require_once(‘class_mtf.php’);
class mtf_articles extends mtf_MASTER
{
function mtf_articles(&$vbulletin)
{
parent::mtf_MASTER($vbulletin);
}

function threadBit()
{
$temp = array();
$temp = ‘blah’;
return array($temp, ‘new_threadbit’);
}

function FirstPostBit()
{
//Code
}

function PostBit()
{
//Code
}
}
?>[/PHP]

First you will notice this:
[PHP]
require_once(‘class_mtf.php’);
class mtf_articles extends mtf_MASTER
{
[/PHP]
This includes the base engine and inits the class. (Replace mtf_articles with mtf_***)

Next you see:
[PHP] function mtf_articles(&$vbulletin)
{
parent::mtf_MASTER($vbulletin);
}[/PHP]
This just sets everything up you can just ignor it.

Third you’ll notice
[PHP] function threadBit()
{
$temp = array();
$temp = ‘blah’;
return array($temp, ‘new_threadbit’);
}[/PHP]
This is function that controls this forum types display on the threadbit page. In this function all you really need to pay attention to is what it returns, which is an array with the first key being the an array of variables to pass along to vb and the template name to swap with the threadbit template.

You’ll notice two other functions in the code above they act the sane as the threadBit function except they swap the template which they are named for.

I know everything under MTF can be structured à la OOP, so how do we deal with it?

/vbulletin/mtf/class.addonname.php
/vbulletin/mtf/functions.addonname.php

???

to make it very clean, i’d like to have everything under the /mtf/ path, at least… but as i do not know how the OOP version will work, with including classes and so on, what i had in mind may be bloated.. lol

as not all addons are « just custom fields », we need a structure that will let us add more functionality when we need to make a Type that require more…

and are all the files always containing ALL and everything?… as i suggested before, i have no idea what will be the future of these addons, but i know that we need flexibility in usage.

« Personal Ads » is a good example of « more complex than a forum » thing… people have to find not only the ads, but also the themes in a sidebar etc… so maybe a default class to generate the sidebars inside the template structure?

How will you work with this Drew ?

Ok, we have the engine mostly done, i’d like to know how we release each addon, and how it work for activation?

as nobody wants to provide us with a solution for licensing, i have to drop the idea to verify the clients. as for the idea to encrypt the files or scripts, this is always cumbersome as we will have to provide support for dumb admins who know nothing about ion-cube etc… and i hate supporting dumb people.

what choices do we have left?

I was about to start working on the extra threads/forum field manager and I thought do we really need to managers that do the same thing? I mean if we just keep a hidden field based on input field in the forms on the page. It would be a lot easier then duplicating the current manager. Does this sound okay?

As we will make all these new engines completely dependant of the forum itself, it’s easy to think that we will be able to evade the big problems from the other products already on the market.

example, all of MadeByMary stuff is complete independant tools — she lied about it, but all her tools were existing tools she stole and recoded to be compatible with vB… i’m not stupid!

same for Lionel’s stuff at vbCover, as for vba-Dynamics, Photopost, and so on… all these tools have Search capabilities, but are dependant of their own core, so when we do a global search via vB, we can not search these elements.

So we need two different things:

in the Search tab of the navbar, we will be able to add selective types:

Search Forum [x]
Search Articles [x]
Search Classifieds [ ]
Search Reviews [x]
etc…

you see the picture (a picture worth thousand words usually)

so we can uncheck what we do not want to search for… the result in the next page would be a selection by type, or mixed up with a prefix of each type… we could add a setting in the adminCP where we choose to display in a style or the other…

the example above is based on the navbar proximity with the whole site… but we also need something specific per type… the actual structure of vB makes it hard for the visitors to find the right search field… so we will add a little modification that i have in bank for a long time:

Search the Whole Forum
Search This forum Only
Search Type X Only

so when we’re in the Classified, the first accessible search field would be the Classified, and the visitor can check to search the whole site… etc!

The goal when the MTF is started well is to rebuild everything that i have in store, and develop new tools. most of these tools are plugins to insert into vBulletin, so they are easy to update from their old form.

So if you want to play with these products as a hobby, just let me know, i will put them in ftp or something.

Ok, today i was thinking (bleh)… what about global addons that are not linked to a specific type?

I have a ton of features and hacks, and they could easily be integrated to MTF, but instead of being per-forum, they can be integrated globally, and activated without a type choice…

The actual deal with MTF is that for each forum, we select a Type and then we configure how that Type will look like in that forum. but what if we select the Articles type and decide that we want to add « Referred Links » in the articles?!… do we have to make each type filled with millions of possibilities?

And for each element we add, like the Custom Fields generator is made for, where and how the info is managed ? we could require that option X is shown on top left in a forum, and in bottom right in another forum…

GARS have an horrible way to deal with that question, as you can create as much types you want and you create each display page as a portal with blocks… maybe our best guess would be to go the « portal » way too ?!

these are details we need to fix because the next step!

Ok, here is a list that I THINK would tease the buyers… i already own most of the hacks that were released to fill these functions from other sites, so i also can stop their production in any time, and switch all the clients to MTF…

ex: i own the rights for MadeForMary’s Classified… we need a MTF Classified. Mary also had that Pals/Mates meeting scripts… we will have a MTF to fill these interests too.

so here is a list:

– Classified
– Realty
– Auctions (a lot more complexe)
– Articles
– Meeting (personal ads)
– Photo Votes
– FAQ / Knowledge base
– Answers.yahoo.com and other content grabbers
– Q&A à la answers.yahoo
– Links Directory
– RSS Feed (vB one is crap)
– Podcast (vB one is crap)
– Magazine
– Interviews
– Cart
– Help Desk
– Support Ticket
– Bug Tracker
– Project Planner
– Releases
– Licenses
– Portfolio
– Quotes
– Artists Lyrics / Discographies
– Bibliographies
– Recipes Books (ton of custom fields)
– Product Reviews
– Sports Statistics
– Bookie
– Trading
– Blogs
– Photo Albums
– Dictionary
– Documentation
– Guestbook
– Movies/Music Database
– nfo – torrent
– Poetry

… some other ideas and what-not?

a New adminCP Control Panel Home, with VERY useful elements… and a suite of cpnav elements to quickly access needed functions, and spare some clicks.

note: version updated to 1.5.1, with the addition of two hooks, to please Taragon who was interested to add his own things to it… 🙂

hooks: nex_basics_belowquickies, nex_basics_belowinfos

you need to upload all the files again as the hooks file need to be located if you build your own products!