TorrentFreak

• Ernesto
• April 25, 2008
• 55
• bittorrent,
  youtorrent,
  youtorrent clone,
  youtorrent clone script
• Print

YouTorrent recently restricted the number of sites it indexes, but before that, it was one of the most widely used BitTorrent meta-search engines. Due to this popularity many have copied the concept -and as of today- everyone can have their own YouTorrent clone, thanks to the free and open source “YouTorrent3″.

When we announced that YouTorrent was launching, we did not expected the site to grow in popularity as quickly as it did. Only a month after its launch the site was pulling in 2.5 million visitors and climbing – quickly. In fact, YouTorrent became so popular that the site made it into the top 25 most visited BitTorrent sites only 2 months after its launch.

Unsurprisingly, other webmasters soon cloned the YouTorrent concept, and within a few weeks PizzaTorrent and NowTorrents saw the light, and even more clones followed. One of these clones is special though, as the code it offers is open source and available for free. The open source YouTorrent clone is named YouTorrent3 and has the same look and feel as the site it’s based on.

“In less than 1 minute you can have your own YouTorrent clone,” YouTorrent3 developer Aleksander told TorrentFreak. He explained that he decided to code it because he noticed that there was a growing interest for open source and easy to use YouTorrent clones.

It is extremely simple indeed, all you need to do is upload the files to your webserver and you’re good to go. It works fine, but the code can still be improved on, as Aleksander notes: “Don’t forget that work is coded in 1 hour, so don’t wonder why some code is strange or looks lame.”

At the moment only the frontend is available for download so people don’t need to install a database, and they can have their own YouTorrent clone online in a few seconds. Aleksander is still tweaking the backend to improve the caching system and make the database compatible with different SQL servers. The backend will be made public in a few weeks.

The source and instructions on how to get it working are available over here.

Update: The YouTorrent3 script used code and results from NowTorrents without permission. The links are removed. When we announced that YouTorrent was launching, we did not expected the site to...