Plugins and Products
One of the new features available in vBulletin 3.5 is plugins and products. Plugins and products are a new and easy way to add new features to a vBulletin installation.
There are some differences between a plugin and a product. A plugin allows new features to be added to a core vBuletin installation. In other words, it is a code snippet imported into vBulletin and executed by specific hooks. This is an easy way to extend functionality without making changes to the underlying PHP files of vBulletin.
A product is a downloadable package that contains notonly plugins but also templates, options, phrases, help files, and control panel entries. This means that these are a bigger, more integrated types of plugins.
Hooks are what drives plugins. These are locations within the PHP code of vBulletin that trigger events. These events can be used to run code contained in plugins. You can view these hooks from the AdminCP by clicking on Plugin System followed by Add New Plugin,...