Curse Gaming site revamp
by Elizabeth Harper 
Dec 3rd 2006 at 9:00AM
The new patch is coming this Tuesday to a realm near you, and when you run off to find updated versions of your latest addons, you may be in for a surprise -- because favorite addon site Curse Gaming has undergone a complete redesign. (If you're trying to find the addon section of the site from the main page, it's a big purple button on the right.) Their addons section looks quite a bit different and no longer sorts addons by familiar categories -- instead, there appears to be one giant list of addons, which is searchable by labels attached to the addon. For better or for worse, the new layout is going to take some getting used to -- and I can only again encourage everyone to go and download addon updates in advance of Tuesday's patch!
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, AddOns
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kres Dec 3rd 2006 1:01PM
Curse-gaming's old best feature: Addons section....
Curse-gaming's new best feature: Everything but the addons section.
There's an old rule for making user focused websites... and that's the acronym KISS -- Keep it simple stupid. I give them props for doing what they did with every other part of the game.. but when I have to do a search for "interface" to find atlas, and can't do a search for "atlas" to find atlas.. that's poor user functionality.
It almost looks like they've put more focus into the project they wanted it to be, instead of keeping a focus on the userbase who accesses it. Besides, why have a favorites section that you can't easily scroll through and just click "download"?
Sorry, I'm not happy with these changes, and it's not the fact that they thought out of the box.. it's the fact they went with a game plan that obviously not excecuted well enough. Especially with no way to determine if it's for the current or future patch with ease... on the verge of a content patch and expansion.
Let's hope they tune out the bugs and create the features that were removed from the old site that the users are plugging all over their "1" forum.
thenonmage Dec 3rd 2006 11:58AM
Patchday addon HELL :(
Will Dec 3rd 2006 1:15PM
I've generally preferred ui.worldofwar.net to curse. UI's frontpage has the list of "new and updated" addons. That's exactly what I'm looking for, always. Gotta keep the addons up to date. Curse seems to make me go through several clicks (and, not that speedily) before I can get a list of addons sorted by last-update. UI feels like it's more optimized for "keep your plugins up to date" while Curse feels like it's more optimized for "find a plugin you don't already have". Guess which one I have to do more frequently (hint: the former).
Also, UI has an RSS feed for their addons (though it's not easy to find). That's extremely useful. I haven't found one at Curse, but then it could be even more well-hidden than UI's is.
G Dec 3rd 2006 1:25PM
Oh my gosh, this is exceedingly bad. I had been using the Favorites function to save the WoW add-ons I use, and to easily keep track of which were updated. Now the favorites page shows nothing but a 'Last Update' date, and no version number. Even worse, this date seems to also include any comments left on the add-on's page, not a new version of the add-on itself. To find that, you now have to scroll way down the add-on page. I can't believe the same people who had made something so easily useful could turn around and spew this out.
I'm glad I've bookmarked the home sites of my add-ons as well, because there seems to be no reason to visit Curse at this point (especially since they stopped listing certain ones like MonkeyQuest for some reason). Ugh. Very disappointing.
thingy Dec 4th 2006 2:38AM
Just had a quick look, most of the mods I use haven't been updated yet and going by past experience I can't foresee the updated version appearing until the first time I try to log in after the patch.
Lokana Dec 4th 2006 5:43PM
@Kres
I don't know where you got the info but when I type "Damage" on the search feature, it gives me a list that contain every addons that have the word "damage" in it.
I did it with "Atlas" also and I found it. Try it again!
In my opinion,. the look of the site improved but I liked how the addons section was so easy to find everything I need.
m Dec 8th 2006 6:47PM
everytime i try going to www.curse-gaming.com or any page brancehed from that site i see this:
Mod_python error: "PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/mod_python/apache.py", line 299, in HandlerDispatch
result = object(req)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/core/handlers/modpython.py", line 177, in handler
return ModPythonHandler()(req)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/core/handlers/modpython.py", line 145, in __call__
self.load_middleware()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 22, in load_middleware
for middleware_path in settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES:
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 27, in __getattr__
self._import_settings()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 54, in _import_settings
self._target = Settings(settings_module)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 80, in __init__
mod = __import__(self.SETTINGS_MODULE, {}, {}, [''])
File "/home/curse/cursedjango/cursesite/../cursesite/conf/settings/wow.py", line 1, in ?
from cursesite.settings import *
File "/home/curse/cursedjango/cursesite/settings.py", line 214