Keeping Your Warcraft Addons Up To Date

While I’m on the subject of World of Warcraft, I want to take a moment to mention the software I use to keep the add-ons I use up to date.

One of the most wonderful things about World of Warcraft is the extensible user interface. The UI is written in LUA and users can install add-ons which add new functionality to it or change existing functionality. Some people screens are entirely different from the stock World of Warcraft UI. I don’t change mine that much, but I do use quite a few convenience add-ons.

The set I use started out as “GrimPack” from “GrimPickle” - it’s a good set of add-ons which have been tested with one another (and in some cases fixed to work better together). You can download it from http://www.grimpickle.com

If you install it, the first time you start World of Warcraft afterwards, your screen will probably be a complete mess. If I have the time, someday I’ll write up a guide telling which modules to disable… I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that, though. Instead, I suggest turning off all of them and then gradually turning on the ones that look the most useful to you.

Once you’ve got a good set of add-ons working for you, you can use WoWMatrix to keep them up to date. WoWMatrix scans the add-ons you have installed and downloads updated copies of them when updates are released. It’s very useful and very easy to use. It runs under MacOS X, Linux and Windows, so all bases should be covered. And it’s free, with a couple of small ads embedded.

You can download WoWMatrix from http://www.wowmatrix.com.