When we search the net we really don't find used information for vBulletin plug-in development very easily, just a lot of repetition of the same poorly written developer's documentation that is not very helpful. After years of frustration with trying to understand the sparse documentation on developing vBulletin plug-ins, I have finally made some headway and thought I would share some "dirty little vB secrets".
First of all, one of the most important parts of developing a vB plug-in is creating options and settings. and you can search in your vB control panel for months and never find how to do it. That is because to create settings you must edit the config.php file and add the following line:
$config['Misc']['debug'] = true;
Unfortunately, this creates debug information for all users, even unregistered guest users (believe-it-or-not), so if you have a busy forum with thousands of users on line and need to add one setting, you are exposing debug information to thousands of users users. The solution, however, is simply:
if($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] =='YOUR.IP.ADDR.HERE')
$config['Misc']['debug'] = true;
Now you can add all the settings you want, without exposing debug information to the world.
In my next post on this topic, I'll share with you the next vB plug-in developer's secret, how to easily use the settings you can now easily create.