how to make your own custom WoW UI - by Anhari

1. Introduction.

Since the most recent patch, addons are pretty easy to understand.

In combat, an addon can present information to you in a predefined area. They cannot make any decisions for you, or "prompt" you to make a decision.

So in combat, addons can:
Display raid frames with player health and mana. They can light up these frames however they want based on the state of the player (if they are poisoned, they can glow green, if they are below 50% health they can glow red, and so on).

In combat, addons cannot:
1. Order information for you in such a way that you can interact with it. That is, you cannot have your raid frames re-order themselves so that the person who needs healing most is at the top. It is for this reason that Emergency Monitors can only show you the people who need healing most -- you cannot click on the EM to heal people any more, you have to find them in your normal raid frames.

2. Make decisions about who to target for you or which spell to use. Decursive worked by selecting a player and choosing a cleanse spell, and casting that spell on that player, so it's buggered on both fronts. The same goes for the mods that auto-chose the most efficient rank of heal for a given player.

So anything that makes a decision for you in combat is not allowed. But anything that merely presents information without moving it around is absolutely fine.

Out of combat, you can do practically anything with addons. :)


2. Installing your addon.

Locate your WoW directory. Let's assume it's C:/World of Warcraft/. All addons, with very few exceptions, are copied straight into C:/World of Warcraft/Interface/Addons/. This folder should already have a few subfolders called Blizzard_AuctionUI and similar.

An Addon will always come in the form of a folder. If you copy a file straight into the Addons directly, WoW will not load it.

The most common places to get addons are:
http://www.wowinterface.com
http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/addons/
http://ui.worldofwar.net/

You can also get files from http://www.wowace.com/files/ but you'll need to know what you're looking for if you go there; it's not really a very browsable site. I usually use Wowinterface and Curse Gaming.

These websites will generally have download links where the files come zipped up into an archive file, usually called addon.zip or addon.rar. Most of the internet uses WinRAR to open these files. Inside the archive file will be one or more folders (some addons come in more than one folder) which you copy straight into your /Addons/ directory.

----

This is very important: you always copy a folder to your /Addon/ directory. If the addon comes with an installer program (like addon.exe) throw it away! Don't run it! Delete it!

No real addon will ever come with an install program, because they aren't necessary. If your download comes with an install program it may have a keylogger or other such nasty thing inside it. You can't get infected just by downloading an .exe file, but you can if you run it.

Obviously you should be careful about what websites you visit to avoid getting a keylogger from other sources, but one of the more technical people on the forum can give you better advice about that than I can. I just run Firefox with Noscript, Adblock and Flashblock and run regular security checks with an appropriate program.

----

Once you've installed your addon, load World of Warcraft and log in. On the character selection screen, there should be a button labelled "Addons" in the bottom left of the screen. Click it to see a list of installed addons. Anything with a tick beside it will be loaded when you load the game. If an addon is labelled as being out of date you can force it to load with the tick box at the top right, but you should probably delete it and look for a more recent version. You can set which addons load on a per-character basis, which is useful: I don't want my druid addons loading for my priest, after all.

To update an addon or install a new one, you must be completely logged out. WoW will only pay attention to addons that you install before you load it up.


3. Configuring your addon.

Some addons just load up on start and don't have any options, but they are in the minority. Most addons have options that you can change or turn off, and you usually get to them in three ways:

1. Minimap icon.

Some addons put a little icon on your minimap. Click it to get to the menu; easy!

2. Chat command.

For some addons you need to type a command in the chatbox to bring up the menu. The download page for the addon will usually say what it is. For example, to bring up the options menu for Drathal's HUD, you type /dhud

2a. A few addons don't have a menu at all, but require you to use the chatbox to set their options. Typing the addon name or its abbreviation as given on the download page will usually get you a list of possible commands, but it's tedious to have to keep going, say:
/addon
/addon option 4
/addon option 4 enable
None of the addons I recommend here are like this.

3. Menu.

If you have Titan Panel or FuBar installed, some addons attach their menu to them. Often these addons will behave like the addons in 2a if you don't have Titan or Fubar. A few addons I recommend, like ag_unitframes and oRA2, are like this.

4. Ace.

Most addons operate on their own. But a large number of Addons use something called Ace, which is a sort of framework for addons. If you have 5 addons that use Ace, as a general rule they will use less memory than 5 addons that don't use Ace. A lot people try to set up their UI using only Ace-based addons to try and save on memory. To be honest, however, if you have more that 1 gig of RAM, it's not really a big problem. I have 2 gig in here and I use a mixture of Ace and non-Ace addons with no drop in framerate.

A lot of Ace-based addons were configured in 2a style for a long time, but these days they tend to give you a drop-down menu if you have FuBar, which is why I recommend FuBar over Titan Panel.

The most recent versions of Ace-based addons are usually posted at http://www.wowace.com/files/

5. Recommended Addons.

This is by no means a definitive list, but these are some pretty nice addons I've come across recently.

1. Unit frames.

These addons replace the default Blizzard unit frames. They show you more information than the Blizzard frames show while taking up not much more room.

Perl Classic Unit Frames. I think these include raid frames too. Minimap button for menu.
X-Perl Unit Frames. Similar to Perl, these definitely include raid frames. Minimap button for menu.
ag_unitframes. Ace-based, includes raid frames. The menu is extremely annoying to use unless you have FuBar installed.

2. Bar mods.

Bongos is my only recommendation here because it's the only one I've used. If you load all the modules then it gets rid of the default Blizzard button bars -- including the gryphon graphics -- and replaces them with ten bars that you can move around and resize freely. Also allows you to move and resize the minimap and those loot roll windows that always pop up in Zul'Gurub when we're clearing trash.

CyCircled is an Ace addon that makes your bar buttons circular. It works with Bongos and a few other bar mods, and is on the wowace.com website. However it often hides the cooldown indicator on the bar icons, so the author (and the Bongos author) recommends that you use it with Omni Cooldown Count, which is brilliant.

3. Top bars.

I'm not a big fan of Titan Panel, but there's nothing especially wrong with it. I prefer Fubar (available from that wowace site) because of the way it works with other Ace mods.

4. Raid mods.

There's a whole thread on this in the Raids forum on this website. Briefly I recommend oRA2 and sRaid Frames, both of which are available on the wowace.com site. You don't need CT Raid Assist if you have both of these, which at the moment -- with CTRA being rather buggy since the most recent patch -- is probably a good thing. oRA2 interfaces directly with CTRA and provides Main Tank frames, rez monitor, cooldown monitor, and so forth. sRaid Frames gives you CTRA-like unit frames with much less memory usage than CT.

Blue linked La Vendetta boss mods in the Raid mods thread, which is a great addition to those two.

For raid frames I use ag_unitframes at the moment, but I don't like it that much and I'm waiting for Perfect Raid to be finished.

5. Miscellaneous.

Master Control Program. This addon is essential if you change your addons around a lot, like I do. It adds an "addons" button to the main in-game menu and allows you to load and unload addons at will.

Drag Queen allows you do drag stuff like the character pane, auction house pane, and so on, around the screen. It doesn't seem useful until you don't have it installed any more. Also wins the prize for "best addon name".

OneBag, OneBank, and OneRing give you one unified bag, one unified bank bank, and an easier-to-use keyring. I adore this addon. Get it from http://www.wowace.com/files/

Clique. I recommend that anyone who plays a healer give this a try. It allows you to bind any spell to a combination of mouse button and key(s) so that you can one-click heal your party or raid; for instance, bind CTRL and mouse button 1 to Greater Heal 2, and you can just click once on the tank to heal him. This is my favourite addon of all time.

Outfitter is a must for druids. You can set up a gear outfit for healing, for nuking, for tanking, and for kitty DPS, and switch between them with one click. Look on the screenie at the end of this post: the top four icons of the left-hand button cluster switch me to bear gear, cat gear, healer gear with lots of +heal on it, and healer gear with lots of int on it. My second favourite :p


And that's it! I'm pooped now. I'll pop a screenie on the end, so if you see anything I use that you'd like let me know and I'll post a link.

This Q&A was found on The Order of Azeroth Guild Site - New server : http://www.theorderofazeroth.net/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=7