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Frequently Asked Questions - Mininova

Location: Mininova > Frequently Asked Questions

Answers

What is Mininova?

Mininova is the biggest torrent search engine and directory on the net. We started in January 2005 as an alternative to the (at that time very popular) SuprNova, which went offline at the end of 2004 due to legal issues.
Our goal is to provide an easy-to-use directory and search engine for all kinds of torrent files. Visitors of Mininova can anonymously upload torrents to this website, tracked by any BitTorrent tracker. Scrape data (amount of seeds/leechers) is collected a few times a day.
Note that we try to keep Mininova family-safe, so adult submissions are not allowed.

What is Content Distribution?

Content Distribution is a new service of Mininova which allows content creators to easily publish and distribute their content for free. Mininova sponsors the required seeding bandwidth and provides the exposure on the website. Advantages for users include higher quality premium content availability and higher transfer speeds, without additional costs. Distributed content is marked as "Featured torrents" at the Mininova front-page.

What is BitTorrent?

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (or P2P) protocol used for the distribution of large files.
More information:

Where can I get a BitTorrent client?

Why should I register at Mininova?

  • Other people can see which torrents you uploaded (this feature can be turned off).
  • You can post comments on torrents.
  • Personalize Mininova with your own settings.

I've got a suggestion, how can I reach you?

You can contact the administrators of this website at staff@mininova.org. Suggestions, ideas and fixes are always welcome. Note that we cannot help you with problems regarding your downloaded files. Please visit our forum or IRC channel and ask advice from our great community.

No, torrent files are not copyrighted, so this is allowed. However, opening a torrent file in your BitTorrent client may start the process of downloading (and possibly uploading) copyrighted content. Depending on the circumstances, such as the content in question and the country you're living in, this might be illegal. In some countries, it is illegal to download and upload copyrighted material. In this case, make sure that you only download unlicensed content via BitTorrent. In some other countries, it is allowed to download copyrighted material, as long as you don't upload. If this is the case, we advise you to use the BitThief client. To be on the safe side, we advise you not to download any copyrighted content at all.

Please note that we do not host any copyrighted content on this website. The torrent (metadata) files that we host do not contain data that might be copyrighted in any way.
However, we offer a service to remove torrents from our website if the copyright holder of the content requests so. These removal requests are only valid if:

  • You are, or your company is, the copyright holder of the content in question.
  • You provide the exact URLs to the torrents, no complete (sub)categories or search queries.
  • You provide the complete name(s) of the content in question.
  • You provide full contact information (including the name and phone number of the contact person), not a general anti-piracy mail address.

If your request complies with all of these rules, send a mail to copyright@mininova.org. Please keep the correspondence polite.
We remove postings as soon as we can, usually within 24 hours. Keep in mind that we can only handle removal requests that comply with the rules mentioned above.

Please send an email with your request to sales@mininova.org.

What is a .torrent file?

This is a small metadata file. Metadata here means that the file contains information about the data you want to download, not the data itself.
Your BitTorrent client needs the .torrent file to connect to the tracker (see below) and download the actual data you're interested in.

What are seeds?

A seed is a client that has a complete copy of the data of a certain torrent. Once your BitTorrent client finishes downloading, it will remain open until you click the Finish button (or otherwise close it). This is known as being a seed or seeding.

What are leechers?

A leecher is a client that is currently downloading the data of a torrent. A leecher does not have the complete file, otherwise it would be called a seed.

What is a tracker?

A BitTorrent tracker is a service on the internet that assists in the communication between BitTorrent clients. When you open a torrent file, your machine contacts the tracker and asks for a list of seeds and leechers to connect to.

What is a private tracker? (icon: )

A private tracker is a tracker which requires registration at the tracker website (click on the tracker link in the red warning message on the general information page of the torrent) before you can use the torrent. This means that registering at Mininova won't help! Such trackers usually have a high amount of seeds, because users get banned if their ratio is too low. See for more information the Wikipedia entry regarding private trackers.

What is an IMDb/Gamez number? (icon: )

Torrents with this icon next to their name have a IMDb or Gamez number specified. This means that you can easily search for other torrents with the same content. This also makes it easier to find the product website or get more information about the movie or game.

What are all those .rar, .r01, .r02 files?

These files are so-called RAR archives. You need to install WinRAR to extract the data of the files. WinRAR can be downloaded from the WinRar website.

What to do with password protected archives?

The password is most likely the URL that's in the name of the torrent (posibly even with [] if it's for example "Test torrent [www.test.com]"). If that is not the case try the URL of the tracker (see the details page of the torrent). If that still isn't the password try to go to the tracker URL (without the scrape part!) and look for a password there. You can also take a look in our forum, where many passwords are posted.

How can I stay up-to-date with Mininova?

We offer an RSS feed to stay up-to-date with this website. You need an RSS reader to use this feature.
In Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari, just click the RSS icon in the right corner of the address bar of this browser window.
In Opera the newsfeeds will automatically be subscribed when you click this link, the feed will show up under "Newsfeeds" at the bottom of your "Mail" panel.
Users with other browsers have to download a RSS reader, you can find a list here. The feed URL is http://www.mininova.org/rss.xml

How can I customize the RSS feed?

It's very easy, the URL scheme is as following:

http://www.mininova.org/rss.xml?cat=5&num=50&direct

Where "5" is the category number and "50" is the number of results you want. Leaving out "cat" means all categories. Instead of "cat" you can also use "sub" with a subcategory number. The default "num" is 20. In the example above, 50 results are shown for the category "Music".
If you append the "direct" flag to the URL, the feed will link to the torrents themselves instead of to the "General information" page.

Are there any plugins for Firefox?

Yes, please take a look at our dedicated Firefox page for plugins and extensions.

What is a magnet link?

Azureus magnet links are a new way of linking torrent files. Instead of downloading the torrent from a webserver, you download it directly from a seed/leecher. The biggest advantage is that you might be able to download the content of the torrent, even if the tracker is down or closed for registration. You need the latest version of the Azureus client with DHT enabled (open your UDP port) to use this feature.

How do you protect the privacy of the visitors?

To protect the privacy of our visitors, we do not log IP addresses or hostnames of our visitors. However, we may log some IP addresses of uploaders for administrational purposes (e.g., banning people who upload spam torrents).
Remember that all torrent submissions are anonymous, no login is required for uploading. We will not distribute IP addresses or other information of visitors of this website to third parties.

How can I clear my search history?

You can clear your search history by visiting this page.

How can I promote your website?

You can link to our website by embedding the following banner in your page:

Here's an example of the XHTML code you should put on your page:

<a href="http://www.mininova.org/"><img src="http://www.mininova.org/images/banner.png" alt="Mininova: the ultimate BitTorrent source" border="0" /></a>

You can also use the following (smaller) button:

In order to place this image on your website, use this XHTML code:

<a href="http://www.mininova.org/"><img src="http://www.mininova.org/images/button.png" alt="Mininova: the ultimate BitTorrent source" border="0" /></a>

It is also possible to put a Mininova search form on your own website. See the example below:

You should add the following XHTML code to your website:

<form action="http://www.mininova.org/search/" method="get">
<input type="text" name="search" size="25" style="color: #000; background-color: #fff; border: 1px solid #000;" />
<input type="submit" value="Search torrents" style="background-color: #e3eeff; border: 1px solid #000;" />
</form>

Some technical details

Mininova is entirely written by us (the admins) in PHP. It doesn't use any template or other system, because they are all too slow. Mininova is running on 4 webservers, 4 database servers, 2 search servers, one NFS server, and one load balancer (plus 5 additional servers for the forum, blog and the ads).

We use LightTPD as webserver because with a lot of hits it's just faster than Apache (which we used to run). Mininova makes heavy use of XCache to cache compiled PHP scripts. XCache is also used to cache blocks of HTML which are generated using information from the database that doesn't change very often or which are requested very often. For example the front-page is cached for 20 minutes. Some other caching times can be found on the statistics page. As DBMS we use MySQL because it's free and fast.

If you have any questions or want to know more about the technical details, just send an email to staff@mininova.org. Note that we cannot help you with problems regarding your downloaded files.