Home Server Land is proud to announce an upcoming Windows Home Server add-in and service designed to help you discover and track useful add-ins right from within the Windows Home Server Console. Enhance your Windows Home Server experience by browsing for add-ins by category, keyword, or even by community rated popularity. Useful summaries, screenshots, and documentation links are provided to help guide your search. Once you've located an add-in that looks interesting, Add-in Central can automatically download it to your home server and help you along with a hassle-free installation process.
Stay up to date.
With the exploding popularity of the Windows Home Server platform, both new add-ins and updated add-ins are being introduced to the community on a near daily basis. Add-in Central helps you keep track of them all by providing a list of all those newly released and newly updated add-ins in one convenient location. Once an add-in has been installed on your home server, how do you know that you always have the most recent version? Easy, Add-in Central does it all for you with its "Live Tracking" feature. Add-in Central notifies you whenever there is an update available for any of your installed add-ins, allowing you to rest easy knowing that you always have the latest and greatest version of your favorite add-ins.
Stay tuned to learn more about the features and beta availability.
I had the privilege of seeing early screenshots of this product. Personally I believe it will be the most successful add-in for HSL. Seriously. Content aggregation and ratings is very reminiscent of the idea behind the IPhone Appstore. Its this similarity that has me making bold predictions.
I have been waiting for something like this. Will it automatically download every addin or only specific ones? What about shareware and buyware items?
Very much interested in beta testing :)
No the one-click / auto download functionality will not be supported by every add-in. Add-in Central will make it easy to find and explore add-ins, jump to authors website or support forum, even possible to rate add-ins directly through the WHS console and more ;)
finally an add-in manager! I have been waiting for this and I cannot wait to beta test this. what a huge game changer this will finally be for the WHS community.
This stuff is right now whta we need. This is a must have application on the WHS. As the beta is to have please think of one of us for the test phase ;-). Go on with your work.
This looks really cool, can't wait to try it out.
A very exciting and long overdue project for the WHS Community. Will it have the ability to flag, notify or warn if there are possible conflicts with the OS Build, existing Add-Ins or other installed software on the Server?
I especially like the automated check whether an add-in is outdated or not. Keep on doing this great work guys. Highly appreciated!
Hi from Italy !
This is a great add-in !
I'm available for Italian translation .... And beta test !
Regards.
@BetaVirus,
Currently Add-in Central doesn't offer any type of conflict checking other than simply showing you a list of requirements for the add-in of interest. However, I could see a future build offering checks against the Power Pack and .NET framework versions installed on your WHS. As for conflicts with other installed add-ins/software, that would be a HUGE undertaking and so it would probably be best left for the author of each individual add-in to handle within their own installer package.
@Gian Luca Farina Perseu,
It would be great if you could help with Italian translations. Please send me an e-mail or private message to discuss this further at your earliest convenience.
Waiting for the BETA!!
How can an Addin Author support this Tool ?
@Pseudocode,
A utility will be made available for authors to submit new (or update existing) add-ins to the database. Please stay tuned for more information and availability.
I think this one will be a must have. I was looking for something like this. Can´t wait until it comes out.
Keep up the great work.
Kristjan
KUDOS it looks like a must have installed addin and I cant wait to test it out.
Any word on when the beta will be available?
Sign me up, please oh please. I'm (im) patiently waiting :-)
Wow it looks fantastic, would love to give it spin. ;)
Just what we need! a must have addin.
In case you need someone to translate to Dutch please let me know.
Very good idea ! I'm your to translat in French
@TheFFF,
Thanks for the offer to help translate Add-in Central into French. You're definitely on my list. <grin>
@roppers,
It would be great if you could help with Dutch translations. Please send me an e-mail or private message to discuss this further at your earliest convenience.
I've received your e-mail regarding the Italian translations and will be contacting you shortly. Sorry for the delay in responding. I've been absolutely swamped this last week.
-- MIKE
This is a great idea. I am looking forward to try it out! Even though my CloudBerry Backup add-in has an automatic check for updates feature I would prefer to have a central place where the users can get notified on the updates.
Andy
Hi Andy,
I'm glad to hear that you like the idea. It's turning out to be quite a nice little add-in if I do say so myself. <grin>
The "Live Tracking" feature is great as it allows you, as an add-in author, to get your latest updates out there really fast. With Add-in Central's "Add-in Watcher" service, your users don't even have to open the WHS Console and launch your add-in in order to be notified that a newer version is available for it. Add-in Central takes care of that for you and alerts them with a notification.
I've received your e-mail regarding the Dutch translations and will be contacting you shortly.
@cloudberryman/Andy,
Please send me an e-mail when you get a chance.
Just so everyone knows, you can follow all of what's happening with Add-in Central in its HSL support forum which is located here:
www.homeserverland.com/.../128.aspx
A handful of folks have been invited to view the new add-in a bit early. However, the public beta "should" be available to everyone interested sometime during the first week of the new year or so.
Thanks for your interest in Add-in Central.
I love to see that my idea from the Windows Home Server Add-in Idea Challenge ‘09 at We Got Served, is being developed, we have been waiting for this kind of Add-in (I´m proud I got a 7´th place)
www.wegotserved.com/.../announcing-the-winner-of-the-windows-home-server-add-in-idea-challenge-09
Yours sincerely
Erik Madsen
OH the Add-in Idea Challenge! What ever happened to the AIC09? Where is the "Home Calendar, Tasks, Contacts" add-in we were promised by WGS?
@emm,
That's great. I don't recall hearing of that add-in challenge before as I don't follow WGS. I guess great minds think alike though. <grin>
@Kirk,
No idea. Guess you'd have to ask WGS about that. I can tell you that it's a HUGE amount of work to write a good/proper WHS add-in and so maybe they simply realized that the work it would take to write the add-ins wasn't worth their efforts.
This looks awesome! Cant wait to try it
i can translate it to Polish if it wont be to much translating
If user make a review or rating within WHSPlus are you looking at providing that review back to the source website? For example if an Add-In is hosted on sourceforge but someone downloads and Add-In will the reviews or ratings be made on both sites?
Oh my God......This will be the best Add-in EVER!!!!
@albal,
I'm afraid that I have absolutely no idea what WHSPlus is??? Sorry.
However, I can tell you that the ratings shown within Addin Central are only linked with the www.HomeServerLand.com web site. I assume that once Addin Central is released publically, it will have a VERY large installed user base, and so the ratings will fairly accurately represent how the Windows Home Server community as a whole feels about any one particular add-in. I think it is outside the scope of the program to attempt to tie it in with ratings/reviews from multiple web sites.
@coolseka,
Thanks for the offer to help translate Addin Central into Polish. I'll be in contact should we decide to pursue that.
BTW, do you feel that there are a lot of Polish speaking folks out there who are running Windows Home Servers? In my own experiences, English, German, and French users tend to dominate the market thus far. Just wondering.
This is so cool. Is it safe to install on my one and only WHS? If so sign me up Scotty :)
@IPExpert,
Ultimately, I guess that no one can make that decision except for you. However, I can tell you that I have it running on my main (i.e. production) Windows Home Server machine (an HP MediaSmart Server EX470) and it is running just great for me on it. We also have dozens of folks testing it at the moment and they're not running into any major problems with the program either. BTW, you can follow what's happing in this area over on the Addin Central support forum which is located here:
Addin Central isn't currently available to the general public yet, but we're hoping to have it available to all HomeServerLand.com readers/followers sometime this coming week. Stay tuned to the HomeServerLand.com front page for all the details.
Good Work Guys I am looking forward to it.
Looks like a must have add-in. Cant wait to try it out. Thanks
any news on when all of us eager beavers can have a look? really looking forward to getting a look at this potentially super addin.
@Colum Devine
PM sent =)
Cant wait any longer...
Hi mouse82,
Should be real soon now. We ran into a problem with Add-in Central's auto-update feature that took a bit of work to get fixed. It's working really well now and so we should be opening the beta up to HSL readers any time now.
Please stay tuned...
Hi All,
It looks like the release candidate for Add-in Central is now available to the first 100 Home Server Land users who happen to sign up for it. See this blog posting for all the details:
www.homeserverland.com/.../Exclusive-AddIn-Central-Release-Candidate.aspx