Curse Mods Unreliable?? News flash to me!

[HansonKerman]

So, a few weeks ago, I had CurseForge in one tab and the Forums in the other, when, I realized I had the same mod on both tabs (I don't remember which), when, I realized, they had completely different version specifications! When I downloaded my first mod, it was from Curse. I went to SpaceDock, and, the version was latest?

So, is Curse not reliable anymore? Or am I imagining it?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Curse and curse forge are the official mod hosting sites, however most mod makers do not like them. Curse particularly has a lot of ads. For a while mod makers would put their mods on generic platforms, such as Dropbox, Mediafire, and Github. However, there was still a need for a proper, built for KSP, modding platform. If I remember right, there was something called the Majiir challenge, to make a hosting site equal or superior to curse. What came out of that was a site called Kerbal Stuff made by @SirCmpwn, which was far better than curse in almost every way. It had no ads, better categories, better UI, hand picked featured mods, and you could sign up for email updates for mods. Over time almost all mods moved over to Kerbal Stuff as a primary host, sometimes using curse or another site as a backup. However, it ran into the one snag of community sites: the maker left. I'm not sure of the exact circumstances, but I believe it had something to do with a combination of hosting costs (~100/month USD just for server costs) and the community taking the site for granted. Unfortunately, all the mods on Kerbal Stuff were lost, since it was impossible to tell whether their license allowed for rehosting easily. The site is now owned by someone else, and is malicious. Don't visit it. Luckily, @VITAS and the community were able to get a replacement (SpaceDock) online within 48 hours of Kerbal Stuff going offline. The owner of Kerbal Stuff also donated their code, so aside from the color scheme, SpaceDock is almost exactly the same as Kerbal Stuff.

EDIT: Since Kerbal Stuff stopped being maintained by @SirCmpwn, it has become a malicious site. Do not attempt to visit it, and definitely don't download anything from it. The forums will break links and mentions of it if it is formatted without the space between "Kerbal" and "Stuff". I've received special permission to skirt that filter in this post, but please don't skirt it elsewhere, we don't want anyone thinking it's a active mod hosting site.

Since most large or popular mods were transferred to SpaceDock by the mod makers, it still remains the most popular hosting site of the community. However, for the best results in being up-to-date, I would look at the forum thread and find the primary download link. SpaceDock conveniently makes it very easy to link forum threads, so searching there for a mod, then checking the thread is a good way to make sure you're installing the right version, since the forum search is terrible. You could also use CKAN, but I only recommend that for large mod suites that have official support on CKAN, since installing mods isn't the hard, and unofficial CKAN support isn't that great.

Edited August 20, 2018 by Mad Rocket Scientist

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

*

Is this your redaction or the forums?

 

We should dub you official forum Historian. 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

29 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Is this your redaction or the forums?

That's the forum's redaction, I don't remember the precursor to SpaceDock's name getting censored though. Should have double checked the post after I posted it.

EDIT: I think that was changed so old links to there wouldn't be followed since it could be a malicious site now.

Quote

We should dub you official forum Historian. 

Thanks.  

Edited August 19, 2018 by Mad Rocket Scientist

[HansonKerman]

Ah.

[VITAS]

I might add that there was a torrent with a big blob of mods that supposed to be cleared of all mods with problematic licenses. I still have the date from it in my possesion but as stated above agreed to start from scratch.

I also wasnt allowed to use * and its design so i ended up using spacedock since i allready owned that domain at the time. The name is also a throwback to Spaceport.

CKAN is only a packet manager and doesnt host own files. So if you download stuff from CKAN a large percentage still comes from SpaceDock.

 

[HansonKerman]

Ah, I never knew what you-know-where was, thanks.

[zer0Kerbal]

would someone kindly send me a link to the original and/or modified *** malicious site we no longer use *** dot torrent?

[linuxgurugamer]

7 minutes ago, zer0Kerbal said:

would someone kindly send me a link to the original and/or modified *** malicious site we no longer use *** dot torrent?

 not available anymore