Tools
After doing the same tedious task a few thousand times, you will want to either write or use tools to automate as much as you can. Over the past year or two I have been exploring this option and here is what I’ve come up with:
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vBulletin Development Environment
An alternative method to writing products; instead of copy pasting data to plugins, phrases and templates, they will be automatically saved from the filesystem instead. At run-time, your project directory will be scanned for changes, and then the appropriate changes saved if they are found. It is a completely transparent alternative to what vBulletin currently offers.
MVC Development Framework
MVC is a very popular design pattern for web applications. Using a rough model based on cakePHP, I created a vBulletin-powered replica which automates much of the tedious code you write. I would say it saves me from about 70% of the code.
CodeIgniter User Integration
Provides the groundwork for working with vBulletin users from Code Igniter. User logins/authentication is completely shared.
