Figure 1.0

Check the icon in Figure 1.0 that looks like a clipboard. This will bring up the Settings window.

Figure 1.1

Fill out your nickname, select your type of internet connection, and then your Connection Settings. If you are within a LAN/router/firewall, select Passive Mode. If you have a sock5 proxy and know how to use it you can fill that out but it isn't recommended.

Figure 1.2

Move onto the Downloads tab (Figure 1.2), and fill out the directories. The download directory is where all downloaded media will go when completed, and the Unfinished Downloads Directory is, as named, where your incomplete downloads go until they are finished.

I suggest you set the limits on downloads to 0 for both figures, as this will allow you to download an unlimited amount of files at one time. Life is great being a leech.

The public hub list url seen in the picture above is what I recommend you use, as it is stable and is usually up and running. The hub list is the huge list of hubs you see when you press the Public Hubs icon on the DC++ interface. For copy and pasting purposes, here is the hublist URL: http://www.1stleg.com/PublicHubList.config

Figure 1.3

In the Sharing tab, you will select which directories you want accessible to others connected on the same hubs as you. Many hubs have sharing minimums, and you may be kicked or even banned if you connect and fail to observe their minimum rule. The hub addresses that I will later share with you generally have share minimums of about 5 Gigs, so try to share AT LEAST that much or prepare to face consequences. Most hubs also have slot-per-hub ratios. Average hub-slot ratio is 3 upload slots for every hub you connect to. Since I will give you the addresses for 3 hubs in this tutorial, it would be best to set your open slots to 9.

And that's it! You're done with configuring your DC++ client. Now on to actually joining some hubs...

Figure 2.0

Click the icon that looks like a star on the DC++ client at the top. This will take you to the Favorite Hubs window. Here is where you can store the addresses of your favorite hubs just like an address book to quickly connect to them without having to type in their addresses everytime you want to connect.

Figure 2.1

Figure 2.2

I made it real simple and easy for you. Just fill out the window as it shows in figure 2.2, and then click ok. Doing this the same way as before, do it again but fill them out to look like the following:

Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4

In the Favorite Hubs window, double click all three entries you've made and you will connect to them. A window like this will appear:

Figure 2.5

On the upper half, to the left there is a chat window. It isn't really important unless you plan on talking with people, but screw socializing - you want mp3s don't you?! To the right, is a hopefully long list of users connected to the hub. I can explain what the user descriptions mean but I'll leave that up to you. We're going to learn how to search for files first. And at the bottom, spanning across the two on top is a window that will display the statuses of running downloads and uploads.

Let's get to some searching.

Figure 3.0

Click the magnifying glass button - this will take you to the Search window.

Figure 3.1

It's very simple, in the Search For box, you enter the title of whatever you are looking for, or artist, maker... anything you believe will help lead you to what you are looking for. The file size business we can ignore, you can learn about that later. In the File Type box you can specify the type of file you are you looking for to help narrow down search results. Next, check the button that says Only users with free slots. This will narrow down your results to people who can immediately upload to you, as opposed to you waiting in their upload queue list forever.

Figure 3.2

IMPORTANT NOTICE: I cannot stress enough that it is very rude to make multiple searches within a short period of time. Please keep your searches to be about 15 seconds apart, otherwise the hubs get jammed up. If you fail to obey this rule of courtesy you might as well be asking to be kicked and/or banned.

Figure 4.0

It shows you who you're downloading from, the speed, progress percentage and other useful information.

Figure 4.1

If you wish to view all downloads you have queued, you can press the icon that shows a folder and a little clock on it. This will display all downloads you have queued regardless of whether they are currently running or not. This window displays useful information such as if you are queued or the download source is simple not online. Newer versions of DC++ allow you to right click queued entries and search for different sources.

Figure 4.1