Installing Add-ons

It’s all about the add-ons. They are what make XBMC such a great media center platform. The very fact that anyone can just go out there write a bit of code and release the next de facto media streaming badass scraping script is the very thing that gives our XBMC’s such flexibility. Of course some are better than others but thats what we are here to do. Bring you the very best of whats on offer.

Every addon review post we make will have some reference to “the repo”, “Googlecode or even “grabbing the .zip”. When we started out we’d post detailed descriptions of exactly how to install each and every add-on. As time has gone by we’re finding we are doing that less. This post should cover everything you need to know about installing add-ons.

There are three main ways of installing.

• Passion XBMC’s unoffical Repo installer.
  When we refer to the repo we can think of it as a website with files to download and the files themselves are the add-ons and scripts etc we need to pimp our media centers. The unoffical repo installer is the home to a majority of the active repos that XBMC add-on developers use. 90% of what we install will come from one of these repos. We’ve covered this before and you can read our guide here. So if we said something like “grab it from nixa’s repo” you would install nixa’s repo from here and then install the add-on. One of the main advantages of installing from a repo is the add-on developer can easily push an update to some broken code without the need for us to manually re-install the update. Easy life.
• Install from zip.
  Sometimes an add-on won’t have been picked up by a repo owner or a repo itself won’t have made it into the installer. In this case you can follow our links (or those from the source) to the compressed .zip file. If the add-on is being hosted on a development site like google code we’ll always try and take you to the downloads page to ensure you get the very latest version. Otherwise we’ll link directly to the download if its on a cyberlocker (megaupload etc) if it’s privately hosted we’ll try and link to the page not the file. To install from zip on any platform is easy. On a machine that has a browser, just download the file to a location on your media NAS so that that it’s easy to reachf room any machine in the house.  In my case d:\xbmc addons. watch me now!
• Directly.
  To install directly you need to know the various paths to XBMC’s addon’s folder. In windows 7 it’s a monster pain in the ass to access. C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\addons Quite a mouthful. It’s also hidden and not writable. to access you will need to goto the start menu and search “show hidden files and folders” then select it in the menu above.
  You need to check the “Show hidden files……” radio button and UNCHECK “Hide protected operating………” Now in explorer navigate to c:\users\USERNAME\ and right click -> properties then click the security tab and check that your username has full permissionsOnce you’re happy the permissions are ok it’s an idea to add the add-ons folder location to your favourite for future reference. Enter the add-ons folder then in the top left hand of explorer right click the farourites icon and choose “add current location to favourites”
  That’s it. you can reload the folder options now and hide the hidden files and folders to tidy up a bit.If you run an XBMC Live install then the best way to install directly is via ftp. Use your favourite client (in our case the excellent filezilla). connect your XBMC install by entering the IP address and the root username and password, which is usually xbmc & xbmc. once logged on just navigate to the /home/xbmc/.xbmc/addonsfolder. Easy.however you choose to connect you should then copy the folder witin the .zip file directly to the add-ons folder. The next time you start XBMC the add-on will be available without the need to install from the GUI