Why Our Engine Will Run SO MUCH Better then vb4
Ok, today I started looking over the tutorials about vbulletin 4 over at vbulletin.org. As I do not have a license for it. While I was looking over the tutorials I noticed a few things.
vBulletin’s template engine is still horrible!
vBulletin STILL keeps its templates in the database. This is a HUGE performance crasher, the query to pull all the template data is going to destroy your load time. I have not seen the vBulletin templates engine code but with all the {vb whatever} commands it has to take some time to process, even if it is cached. Also having to define every variable you want to use in your PHP script is just a pain. This is why in our engine templates are PHTML files that are included. This is simple, fast, and allows complex templates just using simple < ?php brackets.
vBulletin’s Class Structure is the same
vBulletin’s class structure was good, for a PHP class system 5 years ago. The $vbulletin object is massive and it gets tossed around by every function putting a huge strain on the board. My solution a static core. In my engine you call Core::whatever and every core component is available (db, templates, request cleaner, etc.), and the best part because the Core object is static it can be called everywhere without needing the global command.