Guide to "often confusing" addons!

[Gizzly]

1. Shared Media

First addon i am going to cover in this guide is SharedMedia. An absolutely essential addon if you are creating a custom and a sleek looking UI.

1.1 How to install backgrounds, borders, fonts and statusbars

First thing to cover with this great addon is its sole and basic purpose, installing media ofcourse! First off when you install the addon, go into the folder itself (Addons/SharedMedia/) and you will see a .lua file called (SharedMedia.lua). Right-click it and choose edit. In there you will see a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo. If you look closer you can see that theyre seperate lines, and one line for each piece of media installed.
Example:
If you're installing a statusbar called "MyLovelyBar.tga" you'll want to place the .tar file into the statusbar folder (Addons/SharedMedia/statusbar/). After you've done that you'll want to edit (SharedMedia.lua) accordingly. So jump into notepad and in the statusbar section of the document you'll want to add a line:

LSM:Register("statusbar", "NameOfFont", [[Interface\Addons\SharedMedia\statusbar\MyLovelyBar.tga]])

Thats basicly it, people are often frightened of checking this incredibly powerful addon out because of the whole "lua editing" concept. But once you get it, its cakewalk.

2. Pitbull 4

The second addon i'll be covering is Pitbull, a pretty confusing but insanely customizable unitframe addon.

2.1 Layouts

Basicly, pitbull4 relies entirely on layouts, what a layout is: Is basicly the configuration(size, bars, aura, text, everything) for some unitframes. For example:

If you wanna have your player unitframe 200pt wide, and 40pt high, and your target unitframe 190pt wide and 45pt high (just an example, dont judge) You'll want to goto the layouts tab to the left and create two layouts. One called player(not neccesary) and another one called target(again.. not neccesarily, just stay organized and everything will be easier) You'll want to make your player layout the dimensions you wanted, and your target layout again.. same. After you've got all your settings just right on both layouts you'll wanna goto the "units" tab on the left and you will see a few options. On the little dropdown menu there will be units, you'll want to select player -> and there will be another dropdown menu with layouts, pull it down and select the appropriate layout.

You can also use the same layout more then once, so if you wanna have more then one unit twice, you can just create one layout and select it on both units.

1. Shared Media

First addon i am going to cover in this guide is SharedMedia. An absolutely essential addon if you are creating a custom and a sleek looking UI.1.1 How to install backgrounds, borders, fonts and statusbarsFirst thing to cover with this great addon is its sole and basic purpose, installing media ofcourse! First off when you install the addon, go into the folder itself (Addons/SharedMedia/) and you will see a .lua file called (SharedMedia.lua). Right-click it and choose edit. In there you will see a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo. If you look closer you can see that theyre seperate lines, and one line for each piece of media installed.

Example:
If you're installing a statusbar called "MyLovelyBar.tga" you'll want to place the .tar file into the statusbar folder (Addons/SharedMedia/statusbar/). After you've done that you'll want to edit (SharedMedia.lua) accordingly. So jump into notepad and in the statusbar section of the document you'll want to add a line:

LSM:Register("statusbar", "NameOfFont", [[Interface\Addons\SharedMedia\statusbar\MyLovelyBar.tga]])

Thats basicly it, people are often frightened of checking this incredibly powerful addon out because of the whole "lua editing" concept. But once you get it, its cakewalk.

2. Pitbull 4

The second addon i'll be covering is Pitbull, a pretty confusing but insanely customizable unitframe addon.2.1 LayoutsBasicly, pitbull4 relies entirely on layouts, what a layout is: Is basicly the configuration(size, bars, aura, text, everything) for some unitframes. For example:

If you wanna have your player unitframe 200pt wide, and 40pt high, and your target unitframe 190pt wide and 45pt high (just an example, dont judge) You'll want to goto the layouts tab to the left and create two layouts. One called player(not neccesary) and another one called target(again.. not neccesarily, just stay organized and everything will be easier) You'll want to make your player layout the dimensions you wanted, and your target layout again.. same. After you've got all your settings just right on both layouts you'll wanna goto the "units" tab on the left and you will see a few options. On the little dropdown menu there will be units, you'll want to select player -> and there will be another dropdown menu with layouts, pull it down and select the appropriate layout.

You can also use the same layout more then once, so if you wanna have more then one unit twice, you can just create one layout and select it on both units.

3. Other

Here are some other addons that are quite self explanatory but that i thought definetly deserved a mention:

-Quartz: Casting bar addon
-Grid: Raid frames in the form of a square/grid
-Recount: Damage/DPS/HPS meter
-Omen: Threat meter
-Bartender: Bar addon
-OmniCC: An addon to show cooldowns in text form on bars
-KgPanels: A pretty neccesary part in creating a good looking UI(Panels and backgrounds)
-Chatter/Prat: Much better looking, and a comfier chat


I hope this guide has been helpful to you, and good luck in creating your UI's!

Please read this: Due to a low post amount, i wasnt able to put in any images to make it more in depth and "beautiful", i did my best with headers and such but it doesnt come close to all the pics i had in store T_T