Installing plugins

This page is for server owners. If you want to know what plugins are first, start at the plugins overview.

Instructions can vary per plugin

These are the common steps. Always follow the plugin creator’s own instructions where they differ.

Installing one

A plugin is an ordinary resource, so you install it like any other.

1. Put its folder in your server’s resources folder.
2. Add ensure <the folder name> to your server.cfg.
3. Start the server, or start the resource by hand.

vMenu finds and registers the plugin on its own. To control who may use it, see Permissions and settings below.

Use a category folder

Put your plugins in a folder like [vmenu-plugins] and you can start them all with one line: ensure [vmenu-plugins]. Optional, but it keeps your server.cfg tidy.

Start order does not matter

Start vMenu or your plugins in any order, and restart either one whenever you like.

• Restart vMenu and every plugin notices it came back and re-introduces itself. Their menus reappear on their own.
• Restart a plugin and vMenu drops that plugin’s menus while it is gone, then builds them again when it returns.

If a player has a plugin’s menu open when that plugin stops, vMenu closes it for them.

The one thing that does matter is vMenu’s own folder name, which has to be exactly vMenu.Enhanced. Plugin folders have no naming restrictions.

Permissions and settings

A plugin can bring permissions, deciding who may use its features, and settings, which are convars you set with setr.

Do not write those by hand. Start the plugin once with vMenu running and vMenu writes a pair of template files for you, named after the plugin’s resource:

vMenu.Enhanced/config/plugins/<resource name>.permissions.cfg.example
vMenu.Enhanced/config/plugins/<resource name>.configuration.cfg.example

You always get both, even from a plugin that only has one of the two. The empty one contains a comment saying so. Each file explains at the top which plugin it came from.

The plugins folder has to stay

vMenu.Enhanced/config/plugins/ ships with vMenu. Nothing in FiveM lets a resource create a folder, so if you delete it, no plugin templates appear at all.

Using them

Exactly like vMenu’s own config files. Copy the file, take .example off the copy, edit the copy, and exec the copy from your server.cfg.

Here is the whole shape of it, for a plugin called CoolPlugin:

# The plugin's own permissions and settings, one pair of lines per plugin
exec @vMenu.Enhanced/config/plugins/CoolPlugin.permissions.cfg
exec @vMenu.Enhanced/config/plugins/CoolPlugin.configuration.cfg

# vMenu's own permissions and settings
exec @vMenu.Enhanced/config/permissions.cfg
exec @vMenu.Enhanced/config/configuration.cfg

# Lets vMenu write those template files into its own folder
add_filesystem_permission vMenu.Enhanced write vMenu.Enhanced

# Start vMenu and the plugin. These two may be in either order
ensure vMenu.Enhanced
ensure CoolPlugin

Every exec line belongs above the ensure lines, because those lines are what put the permissions and settings into the server, and vMenu reads them from the server rather than from the files.

Never edit the .example files themselves. They are rewritten from scratch every time the plugin registers, so your changes would not survive. Nothing a plugin brings is ever written into vMenu’s own permissions.cfg or configuration.cfg.

Recommended: give every plugin its own config files

You can paste a plugin’s lines into vMenu’s own configs and skip the extra exec lines. It works, but please do not.

With its own files, switching a plugin off is stopping the resource and commenting out two lines. With everything mixed together you have to hunt through your main configs for that plugin’s lines every time, and it is easy to miss one and then wonder why something broke when you turn it back on.

Separate files also mean you can copy one plugin’s setup to another server without dragging your vMenu settings along.

What the permission names look like

A plugin’s permissions live under vMenu’s own tree, in a section named after the plugin’s resource:

vMenu.Enhanced.Plugins.CoolPlugin.Greet

Characters that are not letters, digits or underscores become underscores, so Cool.Plugin becomes Cool_Plugin. The generated template already has the right names, so this only matters if you write lines yourself.

Two shortcuts:

• vMenu.Enhanced.Plugins.CoolPlugin.All grants everything that one plugin has.
• vMenu.Enhanced.Plugins.All grants everything every plugin has, present and future. Handy for a staff group, worth thinking twice about for everybody else, since it covers plugins you install later.

Permissions the author marked as staff only are suggested to group.admin in the template rather than builtin.everyone.

Settings

Settings are plain replicated convars:

setr vMenu.Enhanced.Plugins.CoolPlugin.Enabled true

Change one while the server runs and vMenu picks it up live, the same as its own settings.

Turning a plugin off, or removing it

To stop one temporarily, stop the resource. Its menus disappear immediately. To also stop its permissions and settings applying, put a # in front of its two exec lines and restart.

To remove one for good:

1. Take its ensure line out of server.cfg and delete its resource folder.
2. Delete every file in vMenu.Enhanced/config/plugins/ whose name starts with that resource’s name.
3. Take its exec lines out of server.cfg.

When something does not work

No template files appear. The plugin has to run at least once with vMenu running. If they still do not appear, look for a [Plugins] line in your server console saying it could not write the file. That usually means vMenu is not allowed to write to itself, which you fix by adding this above the line that starts vMenu:

add_filesystem_permission vMenu.Enhanced write vMenu.Enhanced

The Plugins entry does not show up in the menu. It is hidden while no plugin is registered. Check the console for a [Plugins] Registered ... line. If it is missing, the plugin never introduced itself, which is a problem on the plugin’s side.

The plugin registered but its menu is empty or missing rows. That is permissions or configuration. Exec the plugin’s permissions.cfg and run vmenu_refresh_permissions in the server console.

Two plugins clash. vMenu identifies a plugin by its resource name, so two resources whose names sanitize to the same identity cannot both register. The second is refused with a message naming the first. Rename one.

I need help with a plugin. Contact the plugin creator first. If you cannot reach them, you can ask in Vespura’s Discord, but that is community support only.