About .htaccess

.htaccess is a configuration file for the Apache Web Server. It allows you to customize how your server works. Depending on how your hosting provider has the server configured, you can redirect people to different locations, secure directories and files, tell browsers how long to cache files, update PHP variables, and more. vBulletin comes with a pretty extensive .htaccess file that does a these things for you. Location vBulletin comes with a file named htaccess.txt in the original download. When ...

In vBulletin 5.6.5, we added a new feature - Answered Topics.

Topics can now be marked as "Answered." This is a special status applied to a specific post within the topic. The post that is marked as the Answer will be highlighted and show directly under the starting post in the topic.

The ability to mark posts as the Answer in a topic is controlled by permissions. There are three different permissions to control this.
Usergroup and Channel Permissions both...

In 5.7.2, we have added a new feature - Custom Node fields.

This new feature allows Administrators to define text and text area fields that are assigned to channels (eg forums).
When a user creates a new topic, defined custom node fields will be available.

1. The Administrator will create Field Categories in the AdminCP. Each category is assigned to one or more channels.
2. Within each category, the Administrator can create one or more fields that will get assigned

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User ranks allow the administrator to set up image and HTML rewards for their users once they reach specific goals. In versions before vBulletin Connect 5.7.1, ranks could only be triggered by the number of posts and the usergroups assigned to the user. In vBulletin Connect 5.7.1, User Ranks have been expanded to allow more flexibility in creating individual ranks. Now you can build combinations of different criteria to create unique ranks for your site.

Ranks can be created using th...

Debug mode is useful for development purposes- it is required if you will be creating VB5 Modifications you intend to distribute for others to download. However it is also useful for trouble-shooting issues with your site as debug mode often provides more specific error messages when something goes wrong- as such if you are having trouble support will often ask you to put your site into debug mode.

Debug mode requires two small file edits in vBulletin 5. This is because VB5 has two...

If you have custom files, you can create an md5 sums for your smilie directory if you want. Inside the /do_not_upload folder of your download package is a checksum sub-folder. That will create custom md5_sums files.

1. Copy the included sample_checksum_config.php file to smilies_config.php.
2. Enter in your forum root.
3. Give it a product id like 'smilies'.
4. Delete the existing directories and files in the scanpaths.
5. Add in '/core/images/smilies', under the directories comment.
6. Run the command

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We've created a new package that is intended to facilitate the replacement of custom PHP modules with custom Display Template modules. It also demonstrates how to create custom API functions in general. You will find this package attached below. Steps to replace a PHP module Module Edit the api/main.php file Find the customWidgetHtml function Copy your php code from the module into the function. Change the code to generate a string value instead of echoing content and set that to the $myhtml par...

In older versions of vBulletin, you could specify a URL to redirect a forum to another location. This could be on your site or elsewhere. With the release of vBulletin 5, this functionality was removed. You can recreate this functionality using Template Hooks. I will outline the steps to create a channel redirect here.

Note: This functionality is not available on vBulletin Cloud at this time.

This tutorial involves changing options, creating custom templates and building a temple hook. Allowi...

The XML Sitemap specification allows search engines to index your site more efficiently. vBulletin 5 Connect can create the Sitemap automatically so you can submit it to your favorite search engines. Using the default path If you are using vBulletin Cloud, you must use this option. The default value for this is core/store_sitemap. Make sure the directory is CHMOD 0777 on your server. In the AdminCP, go to Settings -> Options -> XML Sitemap and set Enable Automatic Sitemap Generation to Yes. ...

vBulletin 5's user output is created using a system of pages that are customizable by the site administrator. This system is called Site Builder. By breaking the system down into pages, a lot of control is given to the system administrator. By using Site Builder, you can create a unique site without any knowledge of HTML or CSS.

vBulletin's pages are created using layers built upon a grid layout. Each page starts with a layout which defines the content areas of the page. Layouts define...