Addon updating made easy
by Sean Forsgren 
Mar 14th 2008 at 4:30PM
With 2.4 looming, many of you are on the verge of an addon crisis. With most major content patches comes the horror of watching your lovingly crafted UI crumble into out-of-date obscurity. Amidst the chaos, some crusade to protect us addon pilgrims on our journey to updated bliss .These brave souls have developed addons that automate the updating process, and they just save your soul in the coming weeks when we face the Sunwell. Many of you already use programs to manage this process, but for those of you doing it addon-by-addon there are some other options.
The developer of UI Central 4.0 was kind enough to tip us off to the new version of this software package. Stop! Before my fellow Mac users sigh and move on, this one will work with OS X Leopard, so there may yet be hope for your salvation. However, you must have an Intel-based Mac, as I sadly discovered.For you Ace enthusiasts, you can always rely on the Ace updater to handle your updates. I use the Mac version of Ace Updater, which I find keeps my addons smelling fresh and alluding to pine. I personally swear by this one, but I don't have much choice as a Mac user, so take it for what its worth!
There are also numerous other addon updaters out there, a quick search yielded these:
Those are three amongst many I'm sure exist. I can't necessarily endorse any one site or addon as safe or superior, but you've got options. Whatever your source of Addon love, there should be something available for download.
I do want to point out that one great way to find fun new addons is stumbling across them during your updating. Also, this can offer something to do on Tuesdays, when the world comes to a screeching halt.
Have at it, readers! Prepare yourself for 2.4 and chime in with your addon updating suggestions!
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Faeroe Mar 14th 2008 6:06PM
Imo, Jwowupdater is the easiest addon updater. one click updating after telling it where your wow folder lives. It even auto updates itself (if you check this option) Best part it is only needs java to run, and i do believe it runs on macs.
check it out:
http://code.google.com/p/jwowupdater/
Perrins Mar 14th 2008 5:07PM
WOWMatrix is awsome!!!
Verses Mar 14th 2008 5:43PM
I agree, but a new trend has come in .lua "edit it yourself" ultra light addons (such as Butsu, oUF etc.) so you don't really have to update them every patch... But either that, WoWMatrix really is the best one i've ever used.
humperdinck Mar 14th 2008 6:01PM
Agreed on WowMatrix - plus it's available for Mac (non-Intel, even).
Aichon Mar 14th 2008 6:07PM
For Mac users who haven't made the switch to Leopard, there's also jWowUpdater.
http://code.google.com/p/jwowupdater/
It was originally designed to work with Ace addons, but has since been updated to add support for updating from Curse, WoWUI, and WoWInterface. The support for the other three still has a few kinks that are being worked out, but it's in active development and is constantly being updated. And while anyone can use the .jar version of the program, Mac users might prefer to use the Mac-native version that's available from the googlecode site.
zachb Mar 14th 2008 5:24PM
WoWus is also a really good one.
http://wowus.m6.net/
Murdock Mar 14th 2008 5:29PM
Given up many times viruses have shown up in these addon managers I would never, ever use one. UI Central has been hacked and had a logger inserted how many times now?
Definitely a risk not worth taking. I recommend making a favorite list on your choice of addon sites (I use curse) and just hitting that list on patch day.
Theserene Mar 14th 2008 6:09PM
Same thought here. Even a blogger on this site got their account hacked.
I'm not taking risks by introducing executables to my environment that I am not 100% certain of. Manually downloading updates to the addons is a pain but that way I am sure that no .exe stuff is getting onto my machine.
Tumnus Mar 14th 2008 5:42PM
Curse's client automatically notifies you of updates to your add-ons too.
MartinC Mar 14th 2008 5:52PM
BE WARNED.
Many mod updater exe's have been found to contain keyloggers. Some of these may be intentional, while likely most were originally legitimate exe's which have been repackaged to include keyloggers, then uploaded to popular sites.
While updating mods manually is a pain, it's still the safest route. The widespread dominance of keyloggers, along with the even larger pain after getting your account hacked, just isn't worth it. Use your own judgement.
jrodman Mar 14th 2008 6:05PM
You're probably right, although it wouldn't be such a big deal if wow-related software was properly hosted.
Why don't authors of wow related software simply make a minimal website using Trac or similar to post minimal docs and for people to refer to for downloads? It's really not hard. If you can write an addon you can do this.
John Mar 14th 2008 6:19PM
Ya know...I kinda wish my account would be hacked. That way i would be frustrated and quit the game.
Ok not really, but if it happened I would probably quit, as gettign all that gear again would be dis-heartening.
kapowaz Mar 14th 2008 7:29PM
"Important note for Mac users: you must first install the developer preview of Java SE 6."
Ugh. I wish developers would stop inflicting this crap upon us. Listen guys: Java is a really crappy way of delivering good, platform-sympathetic applications that adhere to the human interface guidelines for that platform. This is before you consider the rather silly hurdle that this application requires Mac users install an unsupported and beta-release Java VM.
Sorry, nuh-uh. As others have pointed out, we have WoWMatrix, which is native, has a decent UI and well... it works.
PeeWee Mar 14th 2008 8:30PM
I wonder how many liks to keylogger-updaters this article is gonna produce.
Tekkub Mar 14th 2008 11:32PM
I wish people would stop encouarging people to mass-update on patch day. Every patch day the same thing happens... everyone flocks to the sites to update every addon they own when only a few broke, and the addon sites come crashing down due to the load.
If your addons did not break DON'T UPDATE THEM ON PATCH DAY, it's that simple.
I never push out updates to my addons unless something FUNCTIONAL changed in them, I won't contribute to the huge amounts of wasted bandwidth on patch days.
ScytheNoire Mar 14th 2008 11:34PM
WoWAceUpdater is the best and missing from the list
Seamus Mar 27th 2008 9:02PM
WoWAceUpdater is no longer in development.
LostOne Mar 17th 2008 12:28PM
WowAceUpdater isn't being updated anymore, the developer I guess got tired of people complaining about the ads. But it wasn't getting updated that much and was working fine without need for many of the updates. The only reason to keep updating it is to justify the ads, so he could make money off of it. Greedy.
However, the old version I have works just fine. I'm using it until it breaks (which will only happen if wowace redesigns their site so the updater can't find the addons anymore).
Cairenn Mar 15th 2008 4:02AM
There are updaters available for WoWInterface as well. http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8239-WoWInterfaceUIManager-Windows.html for Windows users, and http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8242-WoWInterfaceUIManager-GenericLinuxMacintosh.html for Mac and *nix users.
Juliah Mar 19th 2008 12:42PM
I've heard advice saying that it's best to update your add-ons individually, as some updaters contain keyloggers.