Hey guys and gals, Trackers not up yet but when it is this tutorial will easily let you open and make a torrent. This tutorial has been aimed at people who have never, or very rarely used torrents. I will update later with an advanced tutorial. The Basics: ok when it comes to torrents there are a few terms that you will need to get to grips with: -Torrent: A file which contains the data for the file you wish to download. -Client: A program which opens a torrent and downloads the data associated with it. -Tracker: A server or host which manages all connected peers on that particular server or 'tracker' -Peers: Anyone else currently connected to a torrent client and using the same torrent. -Seed: Someone who is solely UPLOADING a torrent -Leecher: Someone who is DOWNLOADING a torrent. Those are the basic terms that you need to know to help you work with torrents. A torrent is rather simple. It holds data associated to a certain file or files which you wish to download. The torrent client that you use to open the torrent loads a set of trackers which connects you to a number of peers. The client then proceeds to download your files bit by bit. A piece of a file that you wish to download may be downloaded from any peer who has already completed downloading that piece. This means that even if a peer has not completely finished downloading a file you can still download a part of the file you want from them. In this animation, the colored bars beneath all of the clients represent individual pieces of the file. After the initial pieces transfer from the seed, the pieces are individually transferred from client to client. The original seeder only needs to send out one copy of the file for all the clients to receive a copy. Well thats the basics done, now onto the fun. What do I use to open a torrent?: For anyone starting out using torrents I would suggest starting with uTorrent. u Torrent is a small stand alone program which will download yout torrent files quickly and easily. uTorrent can be downloaded here: http://www.utorrent.com/download.php Once you get used to uTorrent you may want to upgrade to a more complex client which will allow you to configure more options although uTorrent is already pretty good. How do I open a torrent?: When you find the torrent that you wish to download, simply click the link. This should open a dialog window similar to any other file download, Click 'open with' and then choose uTorrent, you may have to browse for it. You should then see this dialog come up, this is explained a little further down. Alternately you can save the .torrent file to your desktop or other location and then from within uTorrent click file then add torrent and browse to your .torrent file. A dialog should pop up. This allows to you set a few options for the torrent you have opened. The most important bit here is the red box.Inside this box is a list of all the files within the torrent that will be downloaded. Make sure that any file you want is checked and you can uncheck any file you do not wish to download. This is handy for roms which may come in a pack. Hit 'OK' you should now see your torrent added to the download list, It will now procede to connect to a tracker or trackers and connect to any seeds or peers for that file, the your download will begin. Easy huh! Making a torrent: If you wish to make a torrent so that other users may download your files then this can be done in uTorrent easily. Firstly in file, click create new torrent A dialog should pop up Use the add file button in red to add a single file to your torrent. A browser will pop up, browse to your file that you wish to add to the torrent. If you wish to add more than one file then use add directory. You must first put all the files you wish to add to the torrent into a single folder. A browser will pop up, just browse to your folder that you wish to add. Within the green box you will want to add a tracker URL, for romUlation this is : Then you can add a short description in the comment box, or any release notes. Make sure the 'Start seeding' box is ticked. Hit create and save as: and save your .torrent file where you want. Your file should now be added to your list as a seeding torrent and will seed (upload) data to other users. Enjoy! Security: Using torrents is a great way to obtain data and files, However i would recommend installing a program to increase your security while using P2P networks. Peer Guardian is a program that can be set up to block known lists of bad IP's This helps to greatly improve your security while downloading torrents you can DL Peer Guardian from here: http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/ Simply install PG and follow the wizard to set up PG! You will need to download the updated IP lists, it will do this automatically at the end of the wizard. If you have problems then visit the FAQ here: http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/faq/
