Basically, it is as the title says. I had always been a fan of CT Profiles and I was sad when they decided to stop the project in favor of their other ones. I had high hopes for Blizzard’s Armory, but I feel it has fallen short of what it was intended to do. So with some new found time on my hands I have decided to try and create a newer and hopefully better version of what CT Profiles had done and what the Armory is failing to do.

So I am coming here to look for a little advice. It has been a few years since I have messed around with building websites; this will take some time but is not beyond me. The largest obstacle that I am seeing is the item database. This is where I see two options, the first and simplest but most time consuming would be to just manually enter all pertinent items and their associated stats. However, the sheer amount of time required to do this makes me shudder. The second is to use some sort of mod that would download items seen in WoW and then compile the database for uploading to the website. The main problem with this idea is it is well beyond my skills, and probably beyond any of the computer programmers I know. So if anyone has any advice in how I would go about creating such a program it would be greatly appreciated. I know it is possible, since other websites like the original CT Profiles and Wowhead also have such a feature, but I am totally lost in how I would even start to create one. I guess there is the possibility of getting someone who already has such a program, like Wowhead, to let me use theirs, but I doubt that it would work since it would probably be seen as competition. I know Wowhead has listed a profiler as one of the many things they would eventually like to do.

Another reason for posting here instead of a computer programming website is to see if people would actually like to see this happen, and if it does what features you would like to see.

Currently, I want to do what CT Profiles did so well and the Armory has failed to do, allowing a person to create multiple profiles for both their current gear sets, as well as being able to theorycraft even more so than what CT Profiles allowed to do. To me the theorycrafting aspect of CT Profiles was its largest attraction, and is the reason for this project. The Armory has filled the gap of displaying your gear to everyone else and allows you to flex your e-peen on the forums. The theorycrafting I plan to allow would be just taking the full character profile and talent specialization and then allowing you to add raid buffs, basically allowing you to see your full stats with your standard raid buffs.

So again, if this is something that you all would like to see let me know, I would also be very appreciative of any help or advice for making this project actually work as well as any features that people would like to see.

chardev.org seems to be headed that way, still beta and only working with Firefox. Don't know if the guy is still working on it, though.

Apart from that, wowhead.com stated in their boards they are considering doing something like that as well. If they were to actually do that, I'd wait for them to finish before starting my own thing.

And apart from that, I have started on something like that as well before somebody pointed me towards chardev.org. I have since stopped working on it, seeing how chardev was a couple of steps ahead of me already. Not seeing much progress over there atm though, so I might pick it up again.

Regarding the database: The Armory is your friend. Parseable XML-output is nice to have, though it does have some inconsistencies (sp?) like seperating between attributes (str/agi/etc) and effects (+heal), but still it's easy. I have a .php that parses the results before handing them over to javascript, since I didn't feel like doing searches/comparisons and the like in JS.

The Basics are already working, though it's still ugly (getting stuff to work > design). At the moment I have a working search without reloading the page, (basic AJAX-stuff), though only by name. Should not be much of a problem to add a slot-selection or anything else the Armory can do itself. You can add/remove/replace items in the various slots, while always keeping track of the total stats for your character.
Sockets and Setbonuses are handed over to the JS, though not parsed at the moment. But that shouldn't be that much of a problem as well.
The main thing I'm missing so far is an implementation of a character-planner á la wowhead's talent calculator, so you can display correct values for, let's say, +heal (=heal+% of int if specced in Holy and the like).

So much for random blabbering about what I know, I'd love to see something like that working again as well.

I've messed around with a [local] profiler for a while and it's a really huge task. I'm too slack to finish it though. The problem is that it's not just enough to plug items in the various slots, that is probably the easiest part of a profiler. For the program to be useful you actually have to create a full item comparison system. You need to handle all stats, armor, low/high damage, sockets, socket bonuses, equip bonuses and even use procs from items. Once you're done with that, you need to implement various talent bonuses too. And then .. and then .. and ..

It really is a huge project and I don't blame Cide for abandoning CT Profiles. He was wasting way too much of his time on the project and they were getting almost nothing in return from it.

So unless you got a ton of resources, both developer time and servers, I'd wait for Skosiris to finish the one on Wowhead: Under Development - Wowhead

World of Warcraft - WoWDigger works. The interface for adding items is awkward, but it gets the job done.

Wowdigger is actually pretty good, I am a bit surprised I never came across this myself. The interface isn't too awkward, I actually think its pretty natural.

Under Development - Wowhead

"A character profile system, including the ability to manage multiple alternate profiles, for all you theorycrafters out there!"

They seem to be working on a CT-Profile-like system as well. No idea how far along it is or if it has even be started. Just a heads up.

Rupture is sort of neat, the MySpace of the WoW community as it were. All nine of us with Rupture profiles are good friends now.

I believe the guys behind the CTProfiles project have stated on their website that CT Profiles 2.0 is in the works, but I'd have to double check that bit of information.

As far as the Armory goes, I would contend that it has become an effective and transparent way to check out what people are doing with their characters. The huge gap in coverage is, of course, you only see what people log out in. PvE versus PvP gear, for instance, is not readily available all in one go-round, and since PvP gear is more important now than it ever was in the time of CT Profiles when you could check that sort of stuff, I would agree with you that something else is necessary.

But above all, I would say the selling point of the armory is transparency.

WoWEquip - In-game CTProfiles

This is what you need, and in game, little weird to start with, but easy to use once you get used to it.

The only limitation is your battleground cluster and how well progressed raiders are.

Rupture is made by the coder who makes Nurfed UI and this is a great profiler for what it seems everyone in this thread is desiring. Its as the other fellow said, kind of like a myspace that can track different alts and whatnot that you do want to show.

Unfortunately, I think this "under development" announcement has been around for a long, long time.

hm, ya he's (i'm) still working on it,...

haven't had much time this week and to be honest, too much motivation, did a lot a fixing and added a feature nobody will find on its own, importing armory profiles...

the progress is kinda slow but steady...