What you can do as an addon maker

ocPortal has been designed to be extremely extendible. Features available to you include:

• Modules. Create new dynamic pages, with new functionality.
• Mini-Modules. As above, but a lot easier for the casual PHP programmer to do.
• Blocks. Create new blocks, with new functionality, to fit on your Comcode pages/panels, or in your templates.
• Mini-Blocks. As above, but a lot easier for the casual PHP programmer to do.
• Hooks. Extend parts of ocPortal that support hooks; for example, create chat room bots.
• Zones. Create whole new sections for an ocPortal site; for example, the ocWorld addon uses a zone to run an online game in.
• Overrides. You can override virtually any line of PHP code in ocPortal, either by overriding an individual file, or by making substitutions on a line-by-line basis. If carefully constructed, overrides are upgrade-safe so your changes will keep running across versions (although major versions may introduce some more major compatibility issues).

A lot of documentation is available to you, including our Code Book and various tutorials (example). Of course, there's also our Developing forum, so if something isn't documented ask away.

Addons are not considered a part of ocPortal, so when you distribute them you can choose whatever license you want. You can also distribute your own versions of ocPortal so long as you meet our license (the Common Public Attribution License, which requires some particular attributions as described in text/EN/licence.txt).

We really want to see what people can do, and see people reaching new heights with new code (and releasing it to others we hope ).