Since the first beta release in December, over one thousand people have tried Diferior already, and many were impressed by the ease of use. It is not much harder to setup that the average blog or CMS software.

One of the downsides of the first beta was that it only worked with a modified version of the XBTT tracker. However, the latest release is no longer a beta, and it comes with several tracker alternatives. Diferior has now a built in php tracker, which requires no configuration and works out of the box. The downside is that it can only handle a couple of thousand peers, because it uses quite a lot of resources.

People who want to be able to track more peers should go for the bundled XBTT tracker, which is really fast, but requires GCC and SSH access which some hosting accounts don’t offer. It can handle tens of thousands peers though, without breaking a sweat.

For those who don’t want to run their own tracker, there’s also external scrape support, which allows use with trackers from The Pirate Bay, or any other open tracker. Ratio enforcement will not work in this case of course.

We asked Povilas Musteikis, the developer of Diferior, what the most significant improvements are compared to the previous release, he told us: “Since Diferior is a multi-purpose CMS, improvements address various issues for various types of websites. I did not focus solely on, say, blogging system or torrents.”

Indeed, Diferior is more than a BitTorrent tracker, it’s also a blog, and it even has forums which now support private messaging as well. The default theme now comes with four color schemes, but since the themes are based on the widely used smarty template engine, creating your own is relatively easy.

There are really too many features to list them all here, you should definitely check it out if you’re interested in this multi functional CMS. It makes running a BitTorrent tracker more easy and fun.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Diferior has an online installer which makes it fairly easy to setup, even for complete novices. When it’s installed there are several options to customize it to your own needs. Diferior has a built in private BitTorrent tracker where users can post torrents and there is also an option to allow public torrents and http downloads.

Povilas Musteikis, the developer of Diferior, told TorrentFreak that Diferior started out as a personal project that got a little out of hand. “The whole “blog-filesharing” concept received very positive feedback from site visitors and I started receiving e-mails from people interested in what CMS I was running.” So, he decided to make it available to the public.

The script is released under a GPL license and Povilas hopes that it will appeal to both advanced users and people who are new to BitTorrent. “I am a linux user and I support OpenSource community,” he said, “for once, instead of only taking, I decided to do some giving and release the script under GPL, so everybody can benefit. Hopefully Diferior will be appealing to both casual and hardcore users. It is easy to install and maintain, but also has a lot of potential under the hood.”

Diferior runs fine as long as your webserver or hosting plan meets the requirements. One of the things you need is ssh/gcc access, otherwise you cannot get the XBT tracker backend running, instructions are included in the Diferior download package. Unfortunately, not all webhosting companies like BitTorrent. Earlier this year we wrote about Hostgator who forbids their customer to host .torrent files, let alone let them host a tracker.

Povilas told us that Diferior will have its own BitTorrent tracker in the future as well as several other improvements. “I plan to constantly add new functionality, based on user feedback and requests. At the moment Diferior is very multi-purpose, with well developed blogging, file sharing and community capabilities. I haven’t put emphasis on any of these functions yet, but I hope to evolve them independently, judging by community demand.”

Themes for Diferior are based on the widely used smarty template engine. Currently there is only one theme available but no doubt more themes will be developed soon.

The script has an impressive feature list for an initial release, to name a few:

There are really too many features to list them all here, you should definitely check it out if you’re interested in this multi functional CMS. It makes sharing even more easy and fun.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.