Time for an update I guess. Been working a bit on it lately and I'm starting to get somewhere. Below I'll briefly go through some key things here.
Configuration
In this AAC I wanted to remove the need for the user to poke around in files manually so everything except the database configuration is changed through the admin interface and after saving the changes, the config values are cached.
Modules
Things apart from basic functionality: login, register, create character will be added as modules, like: highscores, guilds, online list etc. Modules are basically pages of their own, they can simple and they can be big and rich, the admin panel for example is a big module with its own template and a lot of functionality. The highscore list module would be rather simple, a controller, a model and a view file. Modules will have to follow a certain pattern if they want to work together with the admin panel, this way users can download modules from somewhere in .zip format and then install them through the admin panel, no manual installation nor modifications of current code needed.
Plugins
Plugins are things that inject at certain points in the application, by default there are some points in the core of the framework but you can easily add new ones where it would fit. For example, in the "view/search character" module, there's three injection points: one to execute before the presentation, one to override the process and one that executes after. Say you wanted to add Chris'es signature plugin, you'd then need hook it to the point that executes after the module. Plugins in the admin aspect work the same, follow a pattern and you'll be able to install them right away.
Templates
As with modules and plugins, templates can also be installed as long as the pattern is followed to allow it. By default there's no special template engine, things are done in PHP but you can easily add a smarty as a plugin if you prefer to use that system, you'd need to adapt a the view files ofc to follow the Smarty syntax though, we can't do everything for you.
MVC
The AAC tries to follow the MVC pattern, google it if you're interested in what it means.
General
I'm trying to make this "noob friendly", the user will be able to use it without programming experience. If you're a developer then you'll have to do what everyone else does: read code and google, I'm not gonna write any big tutorial for it or offer a lot of support. I hope this AAC is gonna be a lot more developer friendly and extensible than what we have today.