The biggest time waster with writing vBulletin mods is working with the product system. To save templates you have to copy-paste and go between several windows. To do anything you have to use their awkward web interfaces.

Last year I toyed with the idea of importing all the product data from the database into the file system, and then wrote a tool that generates the export XML based on the files, rather than the data. It still had a few flaws: you had to run my own script in order to save any changes (to preview or activate them), but at least the data was in the file system. The main benefit here was being able to share the product across SVN or easily back it up.

A few days ago I came up with the idea of saving the data automatically at global_start if any changes have been detected. I managed to get a working copy out, and actually released it at vBulletin.org.

After talking with a friend of mine about some other possibilities, I decided to abstract the whole thing and basically combine the two tools, with the final result allowing you to both directly edit files and have the changes show up immediately, and import/export the whole product package, which allows you to bypass working with the web interface completely!

I’m unfortunately rather busy with client work at the moment, but I’ll try to have a working copy within a week or two.