vgmTorrents » Site Updates

New Message Board is Up!

Hangman — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:37:24 +0000

Back in the day (May 2009) when I had just launched this site, I was wondering if bbPress would’ve been a good choice as a forum software in the long term. I actually liked it for some time, especially for the immediate WordPress integration.
Unfortunately, I quickly realized it lacked a lot of the basic functions most message boards have, such as a proper PM system, bbCode support and so on. It looked quite simple (maybe too much) and I guess most people didn’t like it. I didn’t, either. That was weird.
Anyway, I didn’t have time for a migration — it was too late. What’s worse, is that there’s a MyBB Merge System which allows to import any forum into a MyBB forum (the software we are using now) but guess what? bbPress is not supported. So basically I had to write the importer on my own. After that, since the whole site relied on WordPress/bbPress as the authentication system, while it now uses MyBB (all the accounts have been moved there), I had to change some portions of code on the tracker frontend itself.
So, even if the site doesn’t look much different, indeed some things changed behind the scenes, which means some bug or glitch may pop up in these first days of beta stage. If you notice errors or anything you think it’s weird, just post a reply in this thread! http://bit.ly/1cn32o.

To me it feels like it’s the beginning of a new era for this site — forums are now much more accessible, visible and appealing; I bet we’ll get a lot of new posters with this migration. If you’re wondering why and still reading here, please stop and go have a look at the new boards. Happy posting!

Everything in Its Right Place

Hangman — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:47:17 +0000

Some good news. After almost a week uploading all the torrents to the seedbox with my crappy DSL connection (50 kb/s in upload), transferring files from my old hard-disk through a friend’s computer -mine is officially broken and I’m currently using my laptop- the whole pack of releases on vgmTorrents is finally up and running at quite good speeds and with at least 1 seed for each torrent.
Now that the seedbox is working permanently, each new release will be automatically added to it and downloaded instantly. This basically means that there will be no more dead torrents and we’ll get an huge boost in terms of potential seeders.

During this period of time, I’ve also set up a small Donate section which contains a form for donating money to the project — the page explains how the money will be used in details -including prices for each server- and also contains a progress bar which gets updated every time someone sends new funds. You know, I’ve started this project for fun and all, but I’m having quite an hard time in paying the bills so if you feel like donating I’d really appreciate your help.

Other than that, I want to say thank you to all the people that keep the community alive uploading new awesome releases and seeding torrents. Happy listening and seeding!

Forums Are Back!

Hangman — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:26:20 +0000

After we experienced some server issues and upgraded to the latest WordPress and bbPress versions, the forums were completely unable to work — no shared login anymore and some PHP errors prevented it from even loading at all.
Fortunately now it’s all back online and running without any problems.

As a side note, registrations are now closed. We will soon remove all unused (or abused) accounts, and since it will be an automated task, if you notice your account has been deleted and you’re not sure why, just contact me and we’ll see what can be done.
Also, we’re probably going to give out registration invites to the most active members of the community in the future, just like all private trackers do, so stay tuned on this blog for news about that.

Anyway, the site seems more responsive than before, so I hope you guys and gals will enjoy it now more than ever.

Some Neat Website Updates

Hangman — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:26:13 +0000

I didn’t have much spare time in the last week, yet I managed to add some little features and details to the site.
First of all you may have noticed that the website now uses fancy URLs. Everytime you upload something, the system creates a slug based on the release title and uses that as the torrent ID.
For example, take a look at this:

http://vgmtorrents.net/tor/parasite-eve-original-soundtrack/

Previously, torrent IDs contained just numbers, so URLs were everything but SEO-friendly. The fancy URL thing applies to all other types of links as well, e.g. the ones in the Browse section. Also, all the parameters like search query, results sorting, and so on follow the same principle.
Another update is the improved search function. I’ve modified the search engine code to order results by number of keyword occurrences. Also, torrents which contain the specified keywords both in description and title get higher priority. As for torrent details pages, a neat feature is the shoutbox: any registered user can post messages on each torrent page.

A few articles have been written (thanks to leefayce for her help), and the FAQ has been expanded. Now you can even promote vgmTorrents with userbars, logos, search forms and stuff. Yeah, I know the logo is just text, but I’m not a graphics artist guy, so that’s what you get!
Share and subscribe buttons have been added here and there (powered by AddToAny), so at least now you have yet another way to make the site become more popular.
I also added a little favicon. Not that the little music note appears anywhere in the almost non-existing site logo, but at least it’s neat and green. Better than nothing, I guess.

Unfortunately some people won’t be able to leech anymore, unless they’ll be able to provide a good excuse for their >200 MB downloading and < 1 kB seeding. If you happen to be one of those, just post on the forums, we’ll see what we can do!
By the way, a month is gone since the site has opened, and I want to say thank you to all the people that uploaded stuff in here and filled the Browse section with great videogame music. Keep it up!

Torrent RSS Feeds Now Available!

Hangman — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:35:08 +0000

A new feature is available for all users with BitTorrent clients supporting RSS Feeds (like uTorrent): RSS feeds for new releases.
Here’s the feed URL:

http://vgmtorrents.net/rss/YourUsername/YourPassword

Of course don’t forget to replace those parameters with your actual login data.
This is useful if you don’t want to check for updates every time and want your client to automatically download (and seed) new releases.

We also have a tutorial about this. It refers to uTorrent menus and dialogs but of course it works with any modern client with feed support.

Forum is Up.

Hangman — Sat, 23 May 2009 03:42:28 +0000

Since a few people actually registered on this (by the way, thanks for all your great submissions!), I thought it would be nice to have some way to talk to each other.
So I decided to set up a message board. After some thoughts on MyBB, I decided to try bbPress instead. Why?
Well, it comes with (semi-)out of the box WordPress integration (which is the platform I’m using for blog and user management), so user merging and shared login worked in something like two minutes of tweaking after the install. Some of you may argue that it’s a platform still in its infancy, with only basic functionalities (most of the stuff is provided by third party plugins and yeah, that sounds kinda unrealiable), but I was just very curious, and now I actually like it.
It’s simple, lightweight, fast, and I managed to integrate it in the website layout in no-time (even though there are some things to fix here and there). Also, I like the tags thing. Now I just hope it’ll turn out to be a good choice in the long term. Anyway, hey, we have the forums, so stop reading this and go post now!

…ehr, if you’re still reading, and you see some weird error/glitch in the website or in the board, or you like/don’t like something, or just want to write down general suggestions, just drop a post in the Feedback section. I truly appreciate it. Thanks!

Update: New Welcome Area section added in the forums. If you’re a new member don’t forget to take some minutes to introduce yourself!

Hello World!

Hangman — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:48:18 +0000

vgmTorrents is now open to the public – though the software it runs is still in beta stages.

You are more than welcome to join the community. Please register in order to upload and share your releases – your help is highly appreciated!
Although the site has just been launched, there are already some soundtracks in the Browse section.

Please note that RSS, Community and Search are not yet available (although this shouldn’t really be a problem as for now, since currently there aren’t more than a few releases). Thanks for your contribution!