Is there a simple example application somewhere that we could use as a starting point when writing an application for IP.Board 3.1? I remember in IP.Board 2.3 there was a "Hello World" component that illustrated what was necessary to get a basic component to work. Is there something like this for 3.1?

No, but this might be helpful: http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/documentation/index.html/_/developer-resources/custom-applications/start-here-creating-an-application-r156

I know that article, but it would be much more helpful to have a working, simple example to see how everything fits together. For example, how do I get a page that just displays a box saying "hello world" with the default header/footer? All I can find in that article is a description of how to load custom skins, which is absolute overkill for such a simple application.

This is like giving someone who wants to build a tree house a manual that describes how to construct a sky scraper ;)

To be fair, most folks who are going to try to build an application don't want to know how to just print 'hello world' on the screen; they're going to need to know how to make that sky scraper.

I'm not saying such an article isn't useful, but it would be nice if there was a simpler introduction as well.

I just want to port an application from 2.3.6 to 3.1 without changing the existing source code and code layout too much. It doesn't have to integrate with forums much, so ideally the "application" would just be a thin wrapper around the existing code without any interaction with the cache, template or language system. All I need is the database connection, information about the logged-in user and some API functions.

To be fair, most folks who are going to try to build an application don't want to know how to just print 'hello world' on the screen; they're going to need to know how to make that sky scraper.

true but if you know how to create a new page with 'hello world' you will be able to change it as you like.
seem like the classes are documented but no one explains how to create a page from 0 and im pretty sure that what causing the low amount of mods on the 3.1.X versions.

I have seen some useful articles where you can find some explanations about that but since im freelancer no one is actually going to give me his account so I could customize his forum.

Exactly - just a simple "Hello World" can already show you how to initialize your class, which files to import, how to use templates and so on. If you have a little bit of experience working with PHP and IP.Board this might already be enough to get started and you would only have to occasionally check the documentation when you want to do more advanced stuff.

To me this would seem like a much simpler and much more efficient way of programming.

Did anyone ever take this under their belt, I have coded some large scale mods in Drupal and VB, and I am looking to create an advanced tournament/brackets mod... but I can't connect the dots w/ this stuff. Between the weird IN_DEV errors I have w/ random hooks (in_dev being needed in general), and the complete lack of the templated 'hello world'. Once I get a hello world I start slowly building outputs, then maybe some forms, and playing w/ the API, and that is how I learn to code -- I, like many others, really can't read and comprehend documentation until I have done some tinkering on my own.

I have a hello world app somewhere on one of my other computers.... I'll see if I can dig it up later.

That would make Custos VERY Happy :-p for whatever reason grasping this platform is tough. I have been more tempted to write custom php code and make direct SQL queries. :-

Mark, can you upload it (hello world app) somewhere else?