Add-On types and what they are

There are 3 types of add-on for Nuke. These are Modules, Blocks, and Themes. I will cover what each of these is and what it's for in this section.

Modules

Modules are the content of your website. The features that people can use, anything that appears in the middle of the screen.

These typically include the Your_Account module, Forums, News, Reviews, Web Links, Downloads and many many others that people have built over the past few years, and kept updating them to fit the core of Nuke as it's changed over time.

Most modules can be activated / deactivated at the preference of the admins with modules admin access. Some require other modules to be active to be of any use, and the Your_Account module must be active if you want to allow users to register on your site as members (and hence allow people who are registered to access areas of the site you don't wish to be available to everybody).

Blocks

Blocks are the menus, the information areas and the advertisement areas other than the banners that appear on the left hand side of the screen (and some modules display them on the right-hand side too).

Most blocks can be active / inactive without affecting how the site works in the least, but a way to access modules - especially the Your_Account module has to be provided, so the modules block, or the header bars in the theme have to contain these links.

Themes

Themes are what control the layout, the colors and the graphics on a site. They contain a standard set of functions and variables that can be called by any module or block, anywhere on the site.

Since PHP-Nuke 6.5 was released, the themes can not only determine what the Nuke site itself looks like, but can determine how the forms look as well, thanks to the inclusion of a forums directory inside the theme directory structure.