Creating Addons for the Vanilla Addon Site

This help topic covers some of the considerations addon authors have to consider in order to upload their addons to Vanilla's addon site at vanillaforums.org/addons.

The Info Array

1. Put each entry on a single line.
2. Enter your text as simple single or double quoted strings without concatenation or variables.

Plugins

$PluginInfo['PluginKey'] = array( // The plugin key must match the folder the plugin is in.
   'Name' => 'The name of the plugin.',
   'Description' => 'Plugin description goes here.', // Be as descriptive as possible.
   'Version' => '1.0', // A version number compatible with php's version_compare().
   'RequiredApplications' => array('ApplicationKey' => MinVersion),
   'RequiredTheme' => array('ThemeKey' => MinVersion),
   'RequiredPlugins' => array('PluginKey' => MinVersion),
   'HasLocale' => FALSE,
   'Author' => 'Your name here.',
   'AuthorEmail' => 'Your email here', // optional
   'AuthorUrl' => 'Your url here' // optional
);

Themes

$ThemeInfo['ThemeKey'] = array( // The theme key should match the folder the theme is in.
   'Name' => 'The name of the theme.'
   'Description' => 'Theme description goes here.', // Be as descriptive as possible.
   'Version' => '1.0', // A version number compatible with php's version_compare().
   'RequiredApplications' => array('ApplicationKey' => MinVersion),
   'RequiredTheme' => array('ThemeKey' => MinVersion),
   'RequiredPlugins' => array('PluginKey' => MinVersion),
   'HasLocale' => FALSE,
   'Author' => 'Your name here.',
   'AuthorEmail' => 'Your email here', // optional
   'AuthorUrl' => 'Your url here' // optional
);

Applications

$ApplicationInfo['ApplicationKey'] = array( // The application key must match its folder name.
   'Name' => 'The name of the application.'
   'Description' => 'Application description goes here.', // Be as descriptive as possible.
   'Version' => '1.0', // A version number compatible with php's version_compare().
   'RequiredApplications' => array('ApplicationKey' => MinVersion),
   'RequiredTheme' => array('ThemeKey' => MinVersion),
   'RequiredPlugins' => array('PluginKey' => MinVersion),
   'HasLocale' => FALSE,
   'Author' => 'Your name here.',
   'AuthorEmail' => 'Your email here', // optional
   'AuthorUrl' => 'Your url here' // optional
);

Locales

Support for locale packs was added to Vanilla 2.0.11. Locales are located in your /locales folder. Each locale must contain a file called definitions.php. The info array goes at the top of this file. It has the following format:

$LocaleInfo['LocaleKey'] = array( // The locale key must match the folder the locale is in.
   'Locale' => 'en-CA' // The code of the locale
   'Name' => 'The name of the locale.'
   'Description' => 'Locale description goes here.', // Be as descriptive as possible.
   'Version' => '1.0', // A version number compatible with php's version_compare().
   'Author' => 'Your name here.',
   'AuthorEmail' => 'Your email here', // optional
   'AuthorUrl' => 'Your url here' // optional
);

Please do not use a locale code like 'en-CA' for your locale. Different people may make a locale pack with the same locale as you and both must be able to co-exist on the addons site and even in an application.

If you have language definitions from before and you want to convert them to the new format you can get some help here.

Other Considerations

1. Addons must be uploaded as zip files.
2. The addon key cannot be a number and cannot contain any of the following characters: -,;:/\.
3. Addon keys must be unique for each type of addon across the entire addon site so try not to make your key to generic.
4. When you upload a new version of an addon you must increment its version number or it will be rejected.

See Also

• Converting Old Language Definitions to Locale Packs