Icesnake’s Add-on Emporium, Segment #16: Keeping Up With Everybody
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Keeping Up With Everybody
By this time you probably have a slew of add-ons helping you level up, keep your bags organized, make a killing at the Auction House, and make a fast getaway when your latest AH victim realizes that wool cloth really isn’t worth 35 gold a stack. You’d probably like an easy way to keep all those add-ons up-to-date, wouldn’t you? I knew you would.
Other than manually checking every add-on at the site where you originally got it, there are several effective methods of checking for, and even installing, the latest versions of your add-ons. There was a time when you could do it with just one simple package, but we aren’t going to dredge up old feuds this week.
First, if you get your add-ons through WoWmatrix, Curse, and WoWinterface – the three places I always recommend – life is going to be a lot simpler for you. Why simpler? Because they each have semi-automated updaters.
Curse.com provides the Curse Client. Of the three, it’s my least favorite, because of two things: It requires you to have a curse.com account (and as a computer professional, I am always suspicious about what information might be collected in this way), and secondly, you can only update one add-on at a time if you don’t pay for a premium Curse account. However, the client is functional, although slow and riddled with ads (which you won’t see if you use an ad blocker like Hostsman or the MVPS.org hosts file, thank goodness).
WoWinterface provides (or possibly just works with; I’m a little unclear on who actually owns it) the MMOUI Minion. Since the Minion is written in Java, it will work on Windows, OS X, or Linux; but it is also slightly slower than a native application would be. However, it’s still faster than the Curse client, and it will let you update all available add-ons with a single click. The Minion is still in beta as of this posting, but it seems stable and reliable.
Lastly, WoWmatrix. The WoWmatrix updater is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux, and it’s pretty fast, and again allows for a single-click update of all add-ons. It’s also got a couple of ads, but again, like the Curse client, they will be blocked if you use Hostsman or the MVPS.org hosts file. They’re not as annoying or intrusive as the Curse client ads, though. You will find that there are a number of add-ons that WoWmatrix can’t update, due mainly to a dispute with the Curse site. Overall, however, I like WoWmatrix best of the three.
All three updaters have the ability to mark an add-on as “ignored” and thereafter will not try to look for updates for that add-on.
And now, how to run them? Well, I run all three. First, WoWmatrix; then MMOUI Minion; and lastly the Curse Client. I run them in this order so that, if WoWmatrix or the Minion has updated an add-on, I can mark it as “ignored” in the Curse Client, and save myself the trouble of updating individual add-ons one at a time whenever possible. For the same reason, if WoWmatrix gets an update, that add-on will get marked “ignore” in the Minion; there’s no point in updating it twice, and the Minion can be a little finicky about versions. Because updating in this way is so much faster than the old methods, I check for updates every day before playing WoW.
One huge warning: NEVER EVER let a third-party program run WoW for you. If you do, that program may stay resident, and that’s how keyloggers work. You don’t want your WoW account stolen, so feel free to trust everyone, but ALWAYS cut the cards (if I may throw a poker metaphor out there).
And now I have to go update my ninety add-ons. Boy, this is a lot easier than it was back when I had a hundred thirty-seven add-ons, and no updater package!
Music for this segment is from Freeplaymusic.com and is entitled “Sporting Update” by Phil Garrod, Reed Hays, and Scott P. Schreer.
