• Rest In Peace: files.wowace and WowAceUpdater

    As I'm sure many of you have heard or scene today marks the day where these services have been discontinued.

    Rest in Peace

    Today has marked the day where this page has been officially discontinued in favor of the newer systems that have recently been deployed.

    While I know not everyone is happy over the changed we're going through and the current state of them I want everyone to know that what has happened has had to happen. I apologize that we didn't have enough time to get everything 100% right, but we're working as hard as we can across the board to make things right. It however is an uphill fight.

    For those who don't know....

    A few months ago I posted a long forum post outlining the current state of WowAce and what had to be done to allow the services to continue. I talked to authors and users alike trying to come up with the best solutions possible. And now we're here.

    It's been a glorious if bumpy ride. The success we've experienced on this page and the updater have been an amazing accident, and we weren't prepared for it.

    A little over a year ago Curse.com started subsidizing our servers, and for a time that was enough to get us through the worst of it. But we just kept growing.

    Things reached a critical mass during 2.4. We filled up the entirety of the 1 gigabit connection we where using and ended up pushing out more than 300GB an hour. With more than 500k users downloading updates for every small change things just couldn't keep up financially.

    So that leads us to today.

    In Closing

    We encourage all users who are looking for updates for their addons to head over to Curse.com and look around. If you're looking for Beta and or Alpha releases and are part of our testing community please join us on the new site.

    If you're used to using WowAceUpdater or one of the other third party clients that used this page we encourage you to try out the new Curse Client. It's not as polished as we'd like and it will certainly receive a lot more work here in the new future.

    The above text appeared this morning on files.wowace.com.

    I do this with a heavy heart in many ways, but it has to be done, and not is all lost for there is much to be excited about as well. We have an exciting opportunity to reforge out past mistakes into something amazing. No it will not be pleasant, but yes we will succeed.

    I'm constantly amazed by our community and I ask you all one simple question.

    We're taking one step back so that we may take two steps forward, will you walk with me?


    Curse Client

    Curse Client for Mac

  • Today's Site Issues Recap

    Ok guys, I'm sure many of you have noticed a few outages.

    The first one was due to maxing out our rack's outbound trunk connection. We scrambled to have them run more capacity and now we're doing much better.

    The second was due to some cables being knocked loose during the fix for the first....

    We're sorry about them but I'm happy to say that things are looking good overall. I hope that tomorrow goes well. Wish us luck!

  • Back from Raiding Blizzcon

    Hi guys!

    For those of you who haven't seen me lurking around trying to catch up to things and manage the site today I'm glad to be back from Blizzcon.

    I'm also sorry I couldn't get more done before the ready check came.

    While there I got some nice loot, participated in some great encounters, and all in all had a hell of a time. I wish I had met more of you guys there, and maybe next year more of us can meet together at the Hilton for A.M.F.s and make random jokes and bad gaming puns.

    First though, let's get through this week so we can move on to bigger and better things.

  • The road ahead, or how I finally got the forums off of layaway.

    This is where we stand.

    • Repos are fully imported, and to my knowledge we have no open issues regarding them (please correct me if I'm wrong.)
    • Files import continues but should be finishing shortly. We've done a breadth scan in order to import files for all projects before doing depth imports.
    • Forum import is done, we've also reorganized the forums a few times, we hope it meets your satisfaction, and we hope that if there is some feedback that you'll share it :)
    • User accounts did import from the old forums, however there are still some random issues we've found that have a chance of messing things on occasion. A few things to note
      • It is possible to have your accounts renamed, please let me know if you want this. ( I do have a list of reqs that I'm going to try to knock out tomorrow.
      • If you're not able to log into the forums still let me know. Please confirm this though as we have fixed multiple issues that literally affected THOUSANDS of users each.
      • If you are logged into the forums but all your posts are on another account like 'yourname2' or 'user_134234' contact me and we'll get them merged into your main account.
    • As of yesterday afternoon projects began syndicating to Curse.com, and showing up in the Curse Client. However WAU will not officially be retired till we get a few more kinks worked out of the CC. We hope to be able to get new builds for PC AND MAC out on Monday. I've been using the mac client for the last few days and its been pretty stable and offers most of the core functionality from the windows version. If you want to help beta test drop my a PM on the forums :)

    Here are a few Q&A's that might help you along:

    Q: I miss the old "new posts since my last visit links" from SMF
    A: While not the same there are equivalent features. on the new forums. To see all new posts available on the forums since your last visit click 'New Posts' on the sub nav bar in the forums. To see new replies to your posts you'll have to have subscriptions on the ones you want to track. And can then see all new replies that way.
    Q: OMG! Fixed-width! EWEEEEE!
    A: ITs come to my attention that many of you aren't really a fan of the whole fixed width thing. Therefore I'm reviewing my options on making it optional. Expect something shortly.
    Q: Will/Does the new Curse Client support disembedded addons?
    A: No it does not currently. Yes it will soon.
    Q: What happened to the wiki and all its docs?
    A: It's still available at old.wowace.com. We will be importing articles as time goes on, and you're encouraged to do the same for your projects.
    Q: Where is my mac client! WHERE!! TELL ME NOW!!!!!
    A: First, please don't eat me! Second, right here. We've got the crashes out, and its working pretty well. A few things though
    • Back up your addons. Just in Case(tm).
    • Not all feature present in windows are 100% implemented, but the core ones are.
    • There are still a few known bugs, but we're squashing those daily.
    • Bad auto detections should be mostly fixed now, please advise us if you find any!
    • Again, disembedded support is not in yet, please be patient while we finish it.
    Q: Will the curse client continue to receive updates, or is it done?
    A: Nope, it will continue to receive updates and fixes, further refinement and features all for you guys for a long time to come.
    Q: How much will this whole, 'premium' thing cost?
    A: For authors? Nothing, we got you on this one. For users? No more than $3.00/month or as little as $20.00 a year. More info in the FAQ linked at the bottom.
    Q: Why should I pay that, or whats what money going towards?
    A: A few things:
    • Pay for the service. All that bandwidth fees was eating us alive.
    • Future development and services. We want to offer you guys more, A LOT MORE.
    • No ads, not that many of you don't block them, and that wowace even has any (anymore we used to, but not now). However, this will apply to the whole of the Curse Network.
    • AuthorRewards. Guys I can't stress how cool this is. For the first time authors will be able to reap something for all the hard work they've sown. The authors deserve this hands down. More info in the FAQ linked to below.

    We've also been responding to issues:

    • Forums
      • More than 10k people had issues logging in, this has been largely if not completely fixed. Please let me know if you're still not able to log in.
      • Originally it was announced that the forums would be shared with curseforge, turns out despite their quite at the time people didn't like the idea. So as promised the forums have been separated.
    • Usability & Accessibility
      • I've tried to make the site easy and intuitive to use. In some cases I've failed, especially for those with poor eyesight. I apologize.
      • I'll be adding the ability for the forum to optionally render in variable width mode.
      • Timestamps will soon be customizable, both in format and timezone.
      • Font sizes. I'm examining several other examples of cleaner typography and I plan to make some changes to this soon.
      • Colors. I wanted to keep the old site colors because it'd leave people with at least ONE thing that was familiar. Now that the site is out I will soon feel more free to experiment with them. I hope to eventually offer multiple color schemes, including high contrast, darker, and cool colors.
    • Template issues
      • Sometimes a really long title will cause things to wrap undesirably, thus forcing the sub nav off the sub nav bar. This is *bad*. I'll be truncating to fix it.
      • Diffs currently don't render properly in the change logs on some pages. They fly off the edge of the site.
      • Scroll bar when at 1280x1040. I'm aware, and do want to fix this. It's due to the images at the top right iirc.
    • Repos
      • The repositories had issues during the import, however we've fixed many(all?) of these. Please report any problems pronto and I'll beat it with a hammer until it works for you.
    • Accounts
      • When we imported accounts we imported them from the old forums, not from the svn accounts. Therefore the old svn accounts no longer work.
      • Some accounts need to be renamed and or merged on the forums. I'll be taking care of these over the next few days. Please notify me if you fall into one of these categories.

    I'll be rereading this after some much needed sleep, and make edits then.

  • Forums

    Hey folks, just taking the forums offline for an hour or for some maintenance, if all goes well it shouldn't even take that long.

    EDIT: Forums will stay online, but read-only.

  • The New Wowace! (almost, the forums are on layaway)

    Hi guys I've went ahead and swapped the dns records since most of the site is now usable.

    So all of you should be seeing this soon.

    Here is the status update from the old forum page:

    Today is the day that the below plans go into action. Please be patient while we transition to the new site.

    While the transition is going on many questions can be answered in our knowledge base. Not all things are documented yet but we are working on it continually.

    I'm moving the status messages here, as I've locked the forums.

    A few months ago I outlined an massive site upgrade in [ this thread.] The date has moved several times as we've toiled and waited for the stars to align. However, I am pleased to announce that today is the day we carry out the announcement. As a result the site will be disabled in portions while we handle things. We ask for all of your patience as we work today to achieve the transition. We hope it will be a smooth day.

    I'll be updating this post and responding here through out the day.

    Status

    • Pulling fresh dumps on broken repos - 2:50pm CST
    • Importing users into the new forums! woot! Almost 1/2 way. - 2:50pm CST
    • Resuscitation of the web server :S - 1:00pm CST
    • Importing old forum accounts into the auth cloud. - 12:00pm CST
    • Back at it to get issues worked out and the damned forums fully imported! - 7:30am CST
    • Pausing all forum import until the morning, :( - 9:30pm CST
    • Dns change over, even though the forums aren't really done yet. - 7:30pm CST
    • Babysitting Impex..... le sigh - 6:50pm CST
    • Locking Forums - 6:45pm CST
    • Starting to do forums import - 5:20pm CST
    • Supplemental and post-processing done! - 5:15pm CST
    • Repo import script done! woot! - 4:45pm CST
    • Waiting for scripts to run... long script is long... - 11:50am CST
    • Started file import - 11:50am CST
    • Disabled fisheye - 11:30am CST
    • Disabled svn writes on dev.wowace.com - 10:20am CST
    • Project Import - 10:20am CST
    • Prepwork - 9:00am CST

    We're still working on the forum import so please be patient with that.

  • File upload limitations, No more Rars(and a few others)

    We've been having a lot of issues with the curse client not supporting non zip files. The lack of support for the other various compression formats is a simple matter of not wanting to bloat the client with libs to handle them.

    So for WoW and WAR we've decided to start blocking the uploads of the following file types.

    • rar
    • ace
    • 7z
    • tar
    • gz
    • bz2

    This means that if you want to upload a compressed file it should be a .zip file.

    We're sorry for any inconveniences this may cause and we may reexamine at this to figure out a better solution in the future. But for now please re-upload file of the disallowed types if you wish for them to be the main file for your project.

  • Beta phase commencing (Updated Date)

    Hi guys!

    We've begun a short public beta phase for the new WowAce.

    All users can log in now, not just a select few alpha testers that we had previously.

    Projects have been imported to test and play with. Note: these will all be deleted and a fresh slate will be provided.

    You may notice that most projects belong to the wowaceSVN user. This is because our importer can't figure out whose projects are whose in the general case. If you want to claim your project easily, make sure that your X-Email in your TOC file matches your Curse account. Alternatively, you can wait until after the transition and have a moderator assign properly.

    We expect to start the real transition sometime on Friday, September 19, 2008.

    Hey guys, sorry for doing this, but we need a few more days to run all the data import scripts, so we're expecting the transition to happen either Tuesday(23rd) or Wednesday(24th) at this point.

  • Lich King Beta: Author Key Giveaway!

    We're very excited to offer a unique opportunity for AddOn authors with projects hosted on the Curse Network. You've supported us over the years, and this giveaway is part of our thanks for all the hard work and time you've devoted to improving the experience of World of Warcraft players worldwide.

    We're going to be giving away Beta keys for Wrath of the Lich King, and any AddOn author is eligible! There are a few fairly simple pieces of criteria which must be met, but all-in-all, if you're an active member of the author community, there's a good chance you'll be hearing from us soon!

    How do I enter?

    It's fairly simple to enter; send an email to [email protected] and enter the subject "AddOn Author Beta Key Giveaway"

    Include in the email:

    • Your Curse username
    • Your primary AddOn projects
    • The websites where your AddOn projects are hosted here on the Curse Network

    And of course, the criteria to be eligible:

    • You must be an AddOn author with at least one valid AddOn project here on the Curse Network.
      • The project must be your creation. We cannot stress this enough; AddOns falsely claimed as your own may disqualify you from this and any future contests on Curse.com. Please respect the time AddOn authors have put into their work by leaving the opportunity to valid authors.
      • Compilations do not count as valid submissions for the giveaway.
      • At least one of your projects must be compatible with World of Warcraft patch 2.4.3.
      • If there are multiple members on a winning project, the code will go to the "Project Lead" and they can choose whether to use it or give it to another member of the team.
    • Only one Beta key will be given out to each author.
    • You must be entering the giveaway with either a valid US or EU World of Warcraft account -- Chinese and Korean accounts are currently not eligible for entry.
    • You must enter the giveaway with a valid email address which we can reply to in the event you're chosen.
    • Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to deny entry into the beta.

    Authors chosen for the giveaway will be contacted to supply additional information Blizzard requires to receive the Beta keys, so please submit your entry via a valid email address.

    Once again, thank you from everyone at Curse for all the hard work you've put into your AddOns! See you in Northrend soon!

  • Introducing Email Subscriptions

    In a continued effort to make the sites content more accessible and usable we're launching update subscriptions via email. Until recently keeping tabs on your project (or other projects you're interested in) has been a fairly manual task. Now we have two systems in place to make this easier.

    The first being the RSS feeds we launched last week, but now in addition to them we have a email based subscription service.

    A quick rundown of how they work:

    1. You subscribe via a project's Manage Subscriptions url (i.e. CurseForge.com's Subscriptions) to any of the available subscriptions.

    2. Each subscription has delivery and frequency options.

    3. You will then receive updates as you've specified.

    A couple of notes:

    • "Real Time" currently has a slight bit of entropy in it, if this is confusing or undesirable it can be moved.
    • "Suprise Me" is a random time, its more of a 'fun' feature but still should be useful.
    • It is recommended that you put [email protected] in your address book or contact list to help ensure that you receive updates to your inbox. This is especially important for certain services such as Hotmail and Windows Live Mail.
    • There are currently three subscriptions available. with more to be introduced this week.
      • Files Updates
      • Comments on the Project
      • Ticket Updates (including comments)

    Other future plans include:

    Please vote on the above linked tickets to signify their importance to you.


  • RSS, Repositories, and More!

    Well, we've had a busy week.

    Here is a quick rundown of the features we've hammered out over the last week.

    Ticket System Enhancements

    • Components - You can now subdivide your project into components to organize your tickets.
    • Milestones - You can keep track of what version of your project things get fixed in.

    RSS Feeds

    On a per project basis there are now multiple rss feeds.

    • Latest Images
    • Latest Files
    • Latest Tickets
    • Latest Pages
    • Latest Comments

    There is also a general comments RSS feed at comments.rss

    Open Repositories

    These are special repos that should be accessible (both read and write) to any member who has activated their repository account.

    SVN Access

    Ok, so we know that doing "svn+ssh://" really, really blows! Especially on windows. So we've added a new, additional, way of accessing the SVN repos. You can now use svn:// directly with username/password auth.

    Note! doing svn:// is not as secure as svn+ssh. However, it is much easier to use with tools like TortoiseSVN supporting it with no additional setup.

    Your password will never be submitted over the wire in plain text so it's secure in transit, however, your SVN password WILL be stored in PLAIN TEXT on the server.

    Because of the potential security risk we've created a separate SVN password. Your site login password will never be used for SVN authentication. We strongly suggest that you use a svn password that is meaningless and is not used to secure anything valuable.

    We attempted to find a way around doing it this way, but we were not able to. Please notify us if you know of one. Do note though mod_dav_svn in its current form isn't really suitable to manage our layout. We'd need something along the lines of a great-grandparent path attribute in order to make its deployment feasible. (volunteers?)

    You can set this password via this link. The link is located on your profile page under the Profile Actions dropdown.

    More Packager Options

    In addition to the open repository option we've added another option. You can now specify how the automatic packager behaves towards your project. You can tell it to only package releases, or not at all, to package beta and releases, or everything.

    Poll

    As many of you've noticed, we've added a quick poll system to the front page. This is more of a 'for fun' feature than anything else, however there may be times where we want to ask user opinions about what you'd like to see.

    I think that's just about everything. However, if you think we're not doing something quite right or you'd like to see something we don't have yet, please let us know!

  • Projects now require approval

    Previously only files required manual approval, but since we've noticed a trend of empty projects showing up or attempts to be malicious, we've added manual approval for projects as well.

    What does this mean to you?

    Basically, you have to wait for an administrator to approve your new project (and as usual, your files). We're available pretty much all the time, though. So it shouldn't be a problem. If you feel we're slow, feel free to stop by IRC and poke us. Try poking Zyuu first, if it's regarding approvals.

    IRC Information: #CurseForge @ irc.freenode.net

  • Knowledge Base

    We've added a Knowledge Base to CurseForge. You find it at the right side of "My Profile" in the menu.

    We will constantly add more information to our Knowledge Base, if you're new to CurseForge -- please take your time and browse the Knowledge Base to get familiar with how things work.