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Personalizing Your Tracker

  1. HEADER.HTML and FOOTER.HTML

    BNBT EasyTracker comes pre-loaded with a default static header and footer document called HEADER.HTML and FOOTER.HTML. These files are located in the ../files/html sub-folder in the installation folder for BNBT EasyTracker.

    The header document appears above your torrent table and the footer document appears below the torrent table, both on the index.html page of your tracker.

    The location of these files on your hard drive must be specified in your tracker's configuration file, using the following:

    bnbt_static_footer = files/html/footer.html
    bnbt_static_header = files/html/header.html

    PLEASE NOTE: These values represent local, relative filepaths, and should not begin with a leading slash. By default these static documents are stored within the tracker's file server folder structure, but it is not necessary. If these files were stored in the same directory as your tracker executable, they would be specified WITHOUT a filepath.

    Your static documents should never contain header HTML tags such as <html>, <head>, <title>, <meta>, <link>, and <body>. These tags are already generated by the tracker. They both can be edited using a plain text editor such as Windows Notepad, Emacs, Pico, etc.

    The default documents included with BNBT EasyTracker have many helpful comments. You should consider using them as a baseline and adding your own custom content to each of them.

  2. Header and Footer Documents for SIGNUP.HTML and UPLOAD.HTML

    BNBT EasyTracker and The Trinity Edition of BNBT now allow you to specify static header and footer html documents to be used on the tracker's SIGNUP.HTML and UPLOAD.HTML pages. These files are not included by default, but can be created/edited using a plain text editor.

    To use, specify the location of these files on your hard drive in your tracker's configuration file, as such:

    bnbt_static_signup_footer =
    bnbt_static_signup_header =

    bnbt_static_upload_footer =
    bnbt_static_upload_header =

    These values should also NOT include a leading slash.

    Here are some sites that offer HTML references and documentation:

    Here are some books on HTML scripting that I recommend.

  3. Cascading StyleSheet

    BNBT supports the use of an external cascading stylesheet to be used for all the tracker generated webpages: index, signup, stats, info, admin, users, comments.

    BNBT EasyTracker comes with a default stylesheet: bluesteel-3.02.css. This file's online location is specified in your tracker's configuration as such:

    bnbt_style_sheet = /files/css/bluesteel-3.02.css

    PLEASE NOTE: This file must be stored within your tracker's file server's folder structure and must have a leading slash.

    It is suggested that you use the default stylesheet and make changes or additions as you see fit.

    The following websites serve as a great resource for how to script cascading stylesheets:

    Here are some books on CSS that I recommend:

  4. Category Tags/Types

    When a user uploads a torrent to your tracker, it is necessary for her to specify a category/type tag for the torrent.

    The categories setup by default are: Animation, Applications, Games, Images, Movies, Music, Miscellaneous and Television. You can decide to remove a category or add one of your own. You will find additional image files for other categories in the /files/images/tags/ folder structure of the BNBT EasyTracker installation, or you may choose to use your own.

    The easiest way to modify your current category tags is to use the included configuration frontend.

    — To add a category using the frontend:

    1. Click the button.
    2. Specify the name for the new category. It is best to use names WITHOUT spaces. Use underscores to separate words if the category name is more than one word.
    3. Press OK
    4. Specify the online location of an image file that will be used by the new category. Optionally, you can choose to not use images for your categories. The space usually taken by the image will be replaced with a text label, using the name of the category.

      This file location is relative to the tracker's URL and must have a leading slash ( / ).

      The configuration frontend does not offer support for categories without image files. If you leave the file location completely blank, it will not create your new category. If you don't want to use an image file for the category, enter a slash ( / ) for the file location. After closing the frontend, you will need to open the configuration file (bnbt.cfg) in a text editor and remove the slash that follows the name of your category and its pipe ( | ) delimiter.

      PLEASE NOTE: The image file location defaults to /file/. This is incorrect, and will hopefully be fixed in future releases of the configuration frontend. The default value should be /files/, which represents the beginning of your tracker's file server's path.

    5. Press OK

    — To modify a category name or image URL using the frontend; double-click the category in the list, make the necessary changes, and press the button.

    — To delete a category using the frontend, double-click the category in the list and then press the button.

    — To add a category by manually editing the bnbt.cfg file:

    1. Open bnbt.cfg in your preferred text/code editor.
    2. Locate the the line that starts bnbt_tag1. You will see that your categories are specified using the following syntax:

      3. bnbt_tagX = categoryName|fileURL

      Where X  is a unique integer, categoryName  is the name of the category, and fileURL  is either a relative or absolute URL to the image file for that category.

    3. If you wish your categories to be in alphabetical order; determine which category your new category should follow, and add a new line beneath it.
    4. Start the new line with bnbt_tagX, where X  would be the integer that comes after the integer for the previous category.
    5. After completing the line using the format specified above, you must adjust the remaining integers, to ensure there are no duplicates. i.e. Add 1 to the remaining category integers.
    6. Save your configuration file and restart your tracker to have the changes take effect.

    — To delete a category by manually editing the bnbt.cfg file:

    1. Open bnbt.cfg in your preferred text/code editor.
    2. Locate the line that contains the category specification you wish to remove and delete that line.
    3. Adjust the integers used for the other categories. i.e. Subtract 1 from the remaining category integers.

    SPECIAL NOTE: As opposed to using BNBT's file server to provide images, you can choose to use an external server on which to store and serve the image files used by your tracker's web pages. This can sometimes drastically improve the speed with which your tracker pages load. To specify an external or absolute file URL, begin the fileURL with http://:

    bnbt_tag1 = Animation|http://www.photobucket.com/trinity/animation.gif

    PLEASE NOTE: Because the above fileURL is an absolute URL, it does not start with a slash ( / ) as was used when referencing a relative URL earlier in this document.

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