I mean, if I were to distribute a FireFox extension, there is the place. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/extensions/ If I upload an extension there, it gets reviewed, and users can search/install it, and it can be automatically updated. What is such place for Blender? The only place I could think of is BlenderMarket, but does it allow submitting free add-ons? And is it free to upload an add-on there? And does it provide automatic update feature?
Try Gumroad. You can set the price or set it to 0 and let the users decide whether to set their own price. You can update when you have a new release and users get a notification.
If you also need the add-on to be reviewed I guess that’s on blender dev but I’m not sure how that works. I assume it’s much more difficult as it has to be accepted.
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You can use github or gitlab to upload your addon. If you don’t want to track the source code, just upload an empty text file for the source code and your own packed zip on the releases tab. Source code repositories are a little bit more technical for the common people.
Other alternative is gumroad, even for free, you can set a “pay what you want” option and that way you might even get some donation from time to time.
However the fastest and easiest way of all… Upload here on the forum a zip file or somewhere else such as “Google Drive” or “One Drive” or “DropBox” etc…
I just got an add-on from dropbox. Unfortunately, I was under the impression that I had to install dropbox to download it, and dropbox instantly set about mangling my file system. It has taken five days to completely remove dropbox and correct its destruction of the standard desktop/documents/downloads files, and restore the files I need to functionality. Even now, Blender is having a hard time accepting that dropbox is not a part of any file path on my system and I haven’t yet figured out how to set a new default file path for the Import .obj and .fbx features.
TL;DR: If you put your stuff on dropbox, I, for one, will never use it.
Interesting, I have no idea about why this happened. If you look more information about it say a few tips so I can avoid any similar situation in the future.
I have used GoogleDrive many times and is really awesome when working on live projects. That way I can throw anything I want into the special folder and it gets automatically synched online.
- D:\projects\2020\superproject — My own files here related to a project
- C:\user\etc\GoogleDrive — special hot directory reserved for google drive
However the trick here is that I try to do selective sync and enable only specific folders. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3057217/how-to-use-google-drives-selective-sync.html
Most importantly the client is only for convenience, same would do to drag-n-drop folders I need in browser window, but anyhow using the client is a little bit more handy when it comes to the native filesystem feel.
Only one downside is that GoogleDrive wants to show your personal information in everyfile you share (file info shows your user ID), so I don’t want to use it in some specific cases.
Well, Dropbox now, by default, creates its own versions of the desktop, download and documents folders, secretly renames them (they still show the standard names on-screen), and attempt to upload everything in any of those folders. I had to figure out how to use .bat files to restore the regular file structure, and hunt down and remove all kinds of ‘dropbox’ pathways that were seeded in all my applications. So, I would just on no account use dropbox, because they don’t tell you all this, you just have to figure it out as does a romp through your files.
Google Drive is, of course, problematic for privacy (Dropbox is notoriously insecure, though), and I’m not sure that One Drive is any better. So I would go with GitHub or something similar, Blender Marketplace isn’t what you need. It would be nice if Blender Artists had a repository for such things.
OneDrive also wants to make public your personal information (same case as Google).
Now as of you mentioned it I thought of recommending some sort of third party client (if you really seek a desktop client at all). I don’t know if there many of these programs, now as I searched I found this for example, but you get the idea: https://github.com/SamSchott/maestral
The only thing that counts here is if any of these clients resolve any of the existing problems and also about providing much more control on how they operate.