In this chapter we'll be looking at how you go about developing a hack for a vBulletin installation. Being based on the PHP language and on MySQL database infrastructure makes vBulletin very versatile, so we're going to have to limit our scope. Almost anything that you would want to do with vBulletin is possible if you know how to leverage PHP and MySQL!
In particular we will look at:
How to hack a discussion board by changing one of the template files
How to distribute a hack by giving other programmers clear instructions about the code changes
Let's take a look at how to create a vBulletin hack. The hack we're going to be developing here is one that allows you to control how vBulletin handles private message receipts. As we saw in Chapter 3, private messages, known as PMs, are messages that one member can send to another member of the board.
The member types a message into the private message window and then clicks on the Submit Message button...