TorrentIt, which had 27,000 members at its peak, was known for having a large mix of scene and non-scene torrents, and for a very tight community. In April 2006, BREIN went after the original owner, who lived in the Netherlands, forcing the shutdown of the site under legal pressure. The TorrentIt crew decided it was better to take the site down than to have him take the heat, and took the site down.

Almost a year later in January 2007, some of the former staff members decided to bring the site back, under a new domain, one not attached to the original owner. The intention was to open by the end of May, but that never happened. The deadline was missed, and it took more than a year before the site was ready for its official relaunch.

BlastGT1, one of the original crew members, and an Admiral (equivalent to SysOp) at the new site told TorrentFreak: “Unfortunately, due to real life commitments, we missed that deadline, and after months of stagnation, I took it upon myself to find good coders within the torrent community who could help us finish the site, and try to repair the damage we had done to TiT’s good name.”

TorrentIt teamed up with the coders from DigitalHive, who were looking to start a new side project themselves, and this eventually led to the long awaited resurrection of the tracker. “Now, we’re back with a different domain, a different source and the drive to succeed,” BlastGT1 said.

“We don’t care about racing sites for pre times, we don’t care about having the biggest userbase. We care about having quality torrents, scene and non-scene, and most of all, we care about community. That is what made TorrentIt stand out before, and so many are already loving its return, finding their cabins kept warm and cozy,” BlastGT1 added.

The new and improved tracker changed its domain extension from .info to .eu, and now runs on Gazelle. Two days ago, they sent out almost 10K invites to former members, and many of them have joined the new site since. Unfortunately, an invite is needed to sign up, so not everybody will be able to celebrate and participate.

BlastGT1 has a word of advice for newcomers though: “Bide your time, get a good honest reputation elsewhere, have patience like people did once upon a time. Sooner or later you’ll make the right friend and snag an invite.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Yes, all those nay-sayers and early fans that have populated the comment sections of our previous stories on Gazelle can finally prove the exploits and bad coding that they’ve been claiming, as the first public release candidate of the script is now available for download.

Reactions from those that have given the site a try, have been mostly positive. The main negative comments stem from the fact it’s not an intuitive install. Part of that comes from the memory caching software , memcached , which gives the project its ‘blazing speed’. Also, right now the system uses XBTT as a tracker, but we’re told that it will have its own (multithreaded) tracker ready for later versions, codenamed ‘Ocelot’.

Also, as things stand, while they hoped for around a doubling of capacity over the older TBsource script, in practice it’s become more like double that, meaning a 10,000 user site under TBSource can probably handle 40,000 without any major difference in site response or system load. Project head WhatMan told TorrentFreak: “We out-shot our initial projections by a very wide margin.”

Interest in Project Gazelle has been fairly strong, and at least half a dozen sites are now running the new script. Perhaps more interestingly, though, is that Gazelle isn’t JUST a torrent site. Due to its modular nature, it can be used for regular sites as well. It’s a bit like a content management system in that respect, and perhaps our earlier comparison to Diferior wasn’t all that far from the mark.

If you’re interested in getting your hands on the Gazelle code, then just head over to the project site and follow the instructions. The whole kit-and-caboodle is released under a modified version of the GPL, so have fun.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Over the weekend, what.cd was upgraded, so that all of its roughly 43,000 members could try it. Whilst there were initial bugs, including a problem with IRC channel password keys, everything seems to be running smoothly now.

More of a problem was a DDOS the site experienced when it had just gone live to its members. The attack which lasted over 4 hours and pulled 100Mb/sec, frustrated a number of the site’s users.

Also a source of frustration for many was a misunderstanding over a ‘freeleech’ offer. Done as a stress test, it was canceled after 6 hours , the announcement about it said it could last 24.

Many users who grabbed stuff they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise in an attempt to increase their ratio, started downloads and still had them going when it was stopped, which lead to some friction between staff and users. As always, the golden rule is to never download something you don’t want in an attempt to boost ratio.

However, Gazelle is not just for music trackers. Another site, Ntorrents, will be changing over to it shortly, according to an administrator there. This will be as much of a test in many ways for Gazelle as this weekend’s launch on what.cd was. This time though, it will be testing its viability beyond music trackers.

The developers have not yet announced a release date beyond ‘when all the major bugs are fixed’. Stay tuned for more.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Speed, however, has been greatly improved over older codes, as well as hardware impact. Its developers estimate that a site running Gazelle can handle approximately twice the number of users that an existing TBsource based site can, on the same machinery, meaning sites can either add more users, or reduce server costs. Contrary to earlier beliefs, a tracker will be offered with the project when it goes public, meaning that everything needed to create a site will be included in one easy package.

How easy is that package to use, though? For the user, it’s very easy. Many people have got used to uploading a torrent file, then having to re-download it before they can start seeding. It’s annoying, and often confuses first time uploaders. Now, if the private flag is applied when the torrent is made, no re-download is needed. It may be a little touch, but it’s one that helps.

Other small touches include tagging, by genre, or style, or whatever the site wants to allow. For films, it means the likes of ‘Rush Hour’ can be tagged ‘comedy’ and ‘action’, allowing easier navigation, and avoiding those questioning niggles of ‘is it more comedy, or more action’ that existing genre-based category systems cause. Having found the title you want, other versions of the same item, in differing formats can be found there too. Again, all this is customizable by the site admin.

Admin tools also seem easy to use, and manage, with less frustrations. Modifying the code to fit the particular needs of a site will also be relatively easy. That’s not to say it’s going to be for everyone. If you’re looking for a small site, then something along the lines of Diferior may be better.

As for downsides, well, it’s an alpha product at the moment, so there are still a lot of bugs to be worked out. Existing TBsource themes will not work with Gazelle, but i’m told they should be fairly easy to create for anyone with experience in making themes. However, it is a positive step moving tracker software forward. The torrent world has needed an easy to use replacement for the aging TBsource, and Gazelle seems like it will fit the bill. How it actually behaves in practice, and the experiences of those starting to deploy it from scratch, are something we will have to wait and see about. Yet, for only 4 months work, it is showing phenomenal potential.

Screenshots

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.