If you are a fan of bitGAMER (BG), this is pretty big news. After running on a customized TBDEV codebase for years since its inception, this well known games torrent tracker is finally moving to Gazelle (which is a BitTorrent tracker script pioneered by What.cd). The move has not officially started yet and there is no specific completion date set as of now, but screenshots made available through a news post on bitGAMER suggest it’s going to happen pretty soon. New version of the tracker will be called bitGAMER 2.0 and once the migration is complete, BG would become the first major games torrent tracker to run on Gazelle codebase (well, there was JuicyBitz but that’s didn’t last long). If you haven’t heard of it, BG is a large PC and Console games torrent tracker with over 20000 active members.
Quoted below is the full news post quoted from BitGAMER’s home page, along with screenshots of upcoming Gazelle implementation:
We're moving to Gazelle!!
For those of you who don't know, bitGAMER is currently run on a (very heavily) edited version of TorrentBits' original TBDev codebase. At the time of bitGAMER's start, this was essentially the only serious choice for a site, so genius coders hunkered down and built a stable, if inefficient site. However, since then, the fine folk at http://what.cd have created a new codebase for torrent sites, codenamed "Gazelle". As well as being as fast as a gazelle, it's also lightweight, efficient, standards-following and graphically customizable. For the last four months or so, our crack team of coders has been hard at work converting the base music-site source into the next step in bitGAMER's evolution, bitGAMER 2.0.
At the moment, the site is mostly coded, but a lot more bugtesting is needed in order to get it to the level of stability and practicality we desire. For this, we're going to need some help, so active members of the community will be hand-picked over the next few days to move their accounts over and help to test out all the new features added to Gazelle. Once this initial testing is completed and the site is running smoothly, we'll move a larger selection of users over for some more in-depth testing. Sometime after this, the entire site will be migrated over to the new codebase!
As well as a sleek new orange theme (designed by the very talented Mugi), Gazelle is known for being incredibly customisable. Anybody on What.CD?, PassThePopcorn, SaveTheCoratee or any other Gazelle site should be familiar with the different stylesheets available to most users, as well as the external sheet option, so any design converting you feel like doing to the site will be easy! We'll be having a competition once the site gets some more bugs ironed out to see who can make the best CSS for the new site. The winner will get their CSS immortalized in the site, as well as a new type of prize that we can't discuss yet...
This has been a labor of love for many months by the entire staff, and we're pleased to present to you a sneak peek of all of our hard work. Click here to view it. The amount of work put in has been quite extraordinary, and we're definitely interested to hear your feedback, so come and discuss the impending move and what it means in the forum.
We hope you're as happy as we are with the changes!
// bG Staff
Part of the Gazelle interface can be seen in the screenshot below:
For the full screenshot, please click here.
Unlike most sites we post here, bitGAMER is currently not open for signups. Right now, one way you can get into bitGAMER is through an invite from an existing member (with a recently tightened invites policy, finding an invite from an existing member may be harder than it used to be – and this is not the place to request them). However BG happens to have an official invites IRC channel – if you don’t break any channel rules, have patience and do as the channel topic says, obtaining an invite will be easier:
Server: irc.underground-gamer.com
Channel: #bginvites
Direct Link: irc://irc.underground-gamer.com/bginvites
New to IRC?: Read this post.
We do not know if BG will open registrations anytime soon but stay tuned as they’ve done it several times in the past. Keep reading FILEnetworks as we’ll definitely update if there’s any news in our private trackers section.
Currently its not known if Underground-Gamer (UG - sister site of bitGAMER which focuses more on retro games) will be migrating to Gazelle. It just so happens that UG too has an official invites channel (plus they have very frequent open signups). If anyone’s interested:
Server: irc.underground-gamer.com
Channel: invites
Direct Link: irc://irc.underground-gamer.com/invites
New to IRC?: Read this post.
Anyways if you are already a member of bitGAMER, just know that good things are coming your way :)
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Special thanks to ‘baba’ for the heads up.
