In the last installment of Gooey, GUI, UI, I discussed some pros and cons for changing your User Interface.  Now I’ll focus on where you can get addons, how to install them, and ways to maintain your UI.

There are two main websites that have large libraries of regularly updated mods for use with World of Warcraft.  wowinterface.com and wow.curse.com both are categorized by what the mod does in general.  You can search for a specific mod or browse through categories of mods.  Both sites also have compilations of mods and even some that come pre-configured so the amount of time you spend in the initial configuration is minimized.  There are several more sites with support for WoW mods.  wowace.com is a great resource for mods designed around the ACE addon development framework.  All mods from this site are fully compatible with each other and tend to have a level of quality.  ACE is also a great place to find support if you are interested in coding your own UI mod. Another site for finding mods is wowui.incgamers.com .  All of the sites mentioned scan mods that they host for computer viruses, trojans, keyloggers, etc so you can trust the mods to be clean and safe for your computer.

Now we need to change gears a bit and introduce the location on your computer where the mods will reside so that World of Warcraft can use the mod.  When you installed WoW, you needed to tell the game where to keep all the files and that is where we need to go.  The default location for the WoW installer is c://Program Files/World of Warcraft/ for Windows XP users.  For Windows 7, the default location of your WoW folder is c://users/public/games/Word of Warcraft/.  If you don’t know where your WoW installation is on your computer, right click the icon you use to start WoW, select “Properties” and look at the Target field.  That is where the WoW executable is.  Navigate to the folder that the executable is in.  This folder contains everything that WoW needs to run.  For mods, the important folders are “Interface” and “WTF”.

So now you’ve found a mod that you want to use and you clicked on the “Download” link from a website and saved it to you computer.  What do you do now?  It is likely that the mod is compressed in some way.  Usually they will be compressed in zip format although if you download the mod directly from a mod maker, it is possible it will be compressed in a different format such as rar.  You can use winzip, quickzip, or similar program to unpack the compressed file and get to the mod.  Once uncompressed, you will see a folder with the name of the mod.  You’ll want to copy that folder including everything in it to your “Interface/Addons” folder.

Congratulations!  Now your mod is installed!  Start WoW up and log in and you’ll be able to access your new mod.  You may need to configure the mod to work appropriately.  If you have problems in how to use your mod, look at the website where you downloaded the mod or it’s possible the mod author created a readme file that may describe how to interact and configure the mod.  Check the mods folder for a potential readme file.

You may remember that I also mentioned the “WTF” folder (rumors have it that this stands for World of Wacraft text files not what you may think it means).  This folder contains all of the text files that hold the configuration parameters and saved variables needed for your mods to work.  Overall, you won’t need to do much with this folder when installing mods, however if you start having technical problems and you call Blizzard for help, one of the first things they may ask you to do is to delete your “Interface” and “WTF” folders.  They ask that you do this, because mods have the ability to cause WoW to crash and not run appropriately.  A more advanced task that you may want to do is to uninstall just one mod for one reason or another.  You’ll have to remove the mods folder from the “Interface” folder and then also remove the saved variables contained in the “WTF” folder.  Again, this is an advanced task and you’ll only really want to go poking around in there unless you know what your are doing.  You could effect all of the other mods you have installed.

So let’s say you’ve got a handle on the above process for installing mods and you’ve now put together a kick-ass user interface just as you’ve always wanted it.  Then the following Tuesday after you’ve done all this work, Blizzard pushes out a new patch to the game.  You log in and WAM!!  Half your mods don’t work.  You could go to the website for each mod you’ve installed and download updates (if they have been updated by the author, that is).  But when you look in your “Interface” folder, you realize that you have tens if not over hundred mods installed!  That could take a huge amount of time to download, uncompress, and install each mod.  Luckily for you, there are people out there the realize this is a pain.

Introducing: addon download managers.  These are programs that you install on your computer to help you handle and organize your mods so that the amount of time you have to spend downloading and installing addons is greatly reduced.  Curse.com’s downloader allows you to browse, install, and update the mods of have installed for WoW without even needing to open up your web browser.  With the free version, you can update one mod at a time at a download rate determined by Curse (based on how much traffic is hitting their site).  However, Curse also offers subscription based options that allow you to update all of your mods with one click at the full download rate, saving a lot of time (there are other benefits for being a subscriber).

Another download manager is WoWMatrix.  It functions just like free Curse downloader to update mods.  WoWMatrix downloads mods from the authors websites rather than from wowinterface.com or curse.com.  Due to this, many popular mods are not supported by WoWMatrix.  More information can be found at wowmatrix.com .