Download of the Week: MakeTorrent

Posted 02/12/2010 at 10:00am | by David Murphy

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It's been a busy week for BitTorrents! I've showed you how to download them, how to tweak the heck out of a great program you can use to download them, and how to remotely access your BitTorrent downloads through Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. You, young padawan, are now fully grounded in the ways of the torrent. But you are no Jedi yet...

The final task that awaits you isn't so much related to the act of downloading information via BitTorrent as it is contributing to the cloud of data that you're usually pulling from. Yes, that's right. You're going to learn how to make your own .torrent file for distribution via your tracker of choice. While I realize there's a handy feature in uTorrent that allows you do this rather effortlessly, you're limited to working on one torrent at a time via this method. What if you want to make a whole bunch of .torrent files corresponding to a larger number of files you want to make available for download?

In that case, you're going to need the Download of the Week: MakeTorrent. This freeware app hasn't been updated since 2004--it's an oldie, but a goodie. It works fine all the way up to a 64-bit installation of Windows 7, so don't worry that MakeTorrent isn't going to be compatible with your OS of choice.

It couldn't be any easier to make your own .torrent using this quick little app. Start the program, then navigate to wherever it is you've stored the files that you want to share. Select them all, and then enter the URL of the corresponding tracker that will help coordinate the communications between your computer and the other peers jumping into your download stream. You can find some useful links to get you started right here. You can also append a comment to your .torrent file if you'd like. Click on the "Create .torrent now" button when you're done and voila! Create first BitTorrent file achievement unlocked! And if you're feeling adventurous, you can also use MakeTorrent to edit existing .torrent files.

Each week, Maximum PC picks a new free or shareware download as its favorite of... the week. Have a nifty application that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.