The dust has settled down on patch 3.02 and the addon upgrade madness. I basically had to redo everything because most of the addons I was using were causing problems and I figured this was the safest thing to do. The first few days I relied on the default interface and that makes you appreciate all the wonderful plugins people have made even more :).
Unfortunately the WoWace updater has ceased to exist. This would have made life a lot easier, but this reset of addons also made me clean out a lot of stuff. There is also the new Curse Updater but I wouldn’t recommend it. The first time I started it, it started updating addons rights away and retrieving old totally out of date versions of some addons. I had to deinstall the thing and go through my addons dir by hand and delete the crap Curse client had installed :(.
Updaters
For now it seems doing things by hand is the best way to do it. If you have an account at wowinterface.com, you can add addons to your favourites and keep track on what has been updated since your last visit. Unfortunately not all addons are available at wowinterface so you have to download some at curse.com. Wowinterface has a java program that is being developed, but I dont know how well it works at the moment. Then there is wowmatrix, which I simply don’t trust. Most addon developers don’t seem to like it either, as it tries to make money off other people’s work (also this link is informative).
Another option is to get an account at worldofwar.net and add your addons as your favorites, you get an email when one of them is updated. I don’t recommend using their client though, it has a history of viruses and trojan horses.
There is some more discussion over at the wowace forums about updaters if you want to keep up with the latest developments.
The List
Here is what I am using now, let me know in the comments if I overlooked something or am not using something that’s absolutely great :).
Actionbar :Dominos
The followup to Bongos and Bongos 2. Seems to work perfectly so far. Druid forms are supported, easy to setup etc. An alternative could be macaroon (the new trinity bars, or good ol’ bartender).
Map :Cartographer
There is also a new cartographer 3.0, but I found that very cumbersome to use, though it is technically nice, it’s not very handy.
Unit Frames :X-Perl
This is just a matter of taste, have been using x-perl for a long time, some people like pitbull, or maybe the simple perl. I like this one :).
Bags :Baggings or Ark Inventory
I am usually using Baggins, but it had a bug recently where you didn’t see the actual bank interface to exchange bags, so I had to fall back to ark inventory. Both excellent addons though that do the job.
MiniMap :Simple Minimap
Allows up move and configure the minimap. An alternative would be Squeenix.
Chat :Prat
This addon gives you extra chat configuration options, and makes chatwindows a lot more readable. You can use clearfont to change fonts as well btw.
Quests :QuestGuru and Lightheaded
Excellent combo ! You may also use QuestHelper, but I haven’t tried that one yet.
Infobar :FuBar – For lack of a better term. This adds an infobar at the top and to the bottom (though you can turn that one off). There is host of plugins for this, like moneyFu, Guildfu (very handy to see what your guildmates are up to), DurabilityFu etc. Just search on Curse and/or Wowinterface to see what you fancy.
That’s it ! Quite a list. This is not everything I am using but the main ones. There is ofcourse also atlas and atlas loot, auctioneer etc,but I thought the above list was a good place to start :).
Have fun customizing your UI ! It’s a whole game in itself !
