Finding open Private Torrent sites

November 10, 2007 by sharky

How to find Private Torrent websites that are accepting new signups.

Private BitTorrent websites are already elusive, but what’s even more fleeting are the times when they’re actually accepting new registrations. Zeropaid.com has a great running list of torrent sites (public and private), so just by clicking on the ones marked PRIVATE will launch you to their site where you’ll be able to see if they’re open for new signups:

http://www.zeropaid.com/links/bittorrent/

And another list of public & private torrent sites can be found here:

http://www.orbdesign.net/bt/

And here’s a great search tip for finding private BitTorrent trackers that are accepting new signups. In the Google search window, type in this:

torrents inurl:signup.php

Google will now search torrent sites that are currently displaying a signup page (and thus accepting new members). At last check, it came back with 674 results. (No longer must you fumble around with ‘Tracker Checker 2′.)

Tracker Checker 2

Another excellent tool to find private trackers is through software, like “Tracker Checker 2″ available here. Tracker 2 goes through a list of known private torrent sites and notifies you when they become open to new registrations.

To use Tracker Checker 2, you’ll need to have .NET framework installed on the system. Tracker Checker 2 runs in your taskbar, so you’ll have to double-click it to open it. All you do is put a checkmark in whatever private trackers you want it to search (you only have to do this once, as it will remember your settings the next time you run it). Wait 60 seconds, and it will show you the results. Results with a yellow ‘warning’ triangle mean the tracker (website) is down or the website has moved or the signup page has been removed (but could come back up). Ones with a blank field (where a checkmark should be) are working trackers, but NOT accepting new signups. Ones with a green checkmark mean these sites ARE accepting new signups. Highlight the one you want to join and then click the small GLOBE icon at the top; this will take you to the signup page of their website. Note that Tracker Checker will re-check the ones you’ve specified every 60 seconds (by default) so the results will change over time.

How to add your own private trackers to Tracker Checker:

Since Tracker Checker is software that relies on a database file for the list of private trackers, the list itself will not update. Check back at their website once in a while, maybe there’ll be a program update or link to a new trackers.xml file. But more importantly, you can add your own private trackers to the database file that Tracker Checker uses in its search. First, you need to know the proper web address (URL) to the signup page. You can find these by clicking here, and here, but click on the links of only the “private” or “registration required” ones. This will launch you to their website, and you will have to click a “SIGNUP” or “JOIN” button/link to get to the signup page. Now, you are not trying to sign up here, but if you find an open one, great! This URL in the title bar at the signup page is the path that you need for adding or editing any trackers in the .xml file, and typically the path ends with /signup.php or sometimes /join.php. Click the ADD button shown above. This will bring up this next window:

NAME:	Enter a name for the new tracker here. This is not the URL, so the name is arbitrary.
Signup URL:	Enter the signup URL (as seen above) here. For example, http://oink.cd/signup.php
Find String:	Leave this field as “Desired username” (without the quotes). This is because every signup page will have this same text in the signup.php link, for users to be able to select a username when logging in.
Match Type:	Keep this button on “Positive”. This tells Tracker Checker to search a sites’ signup.php link and report when it finds the words “Desired username”. When it finds those words, that means the site is open for new members. Basically Tracker Checker simply checks private trackers “signup.php” pages looking for these two words.

If you like, you can edit the existing entries by clicking the EDIT button (next to add). Do this if you want to update the signup URL for the listings that display the yellow warning sign. First, highlight the one you want to edit, and click the GLOBE icon. This will take you to their signup page. You should get the “Internet Explorer (or comparable browser) cannot find the webpage” message. This is because:

1. The /signup.php link moved or changed names (perhaps to ‘join.php’ or ‘register.php’). Try removing the /signup.php from the URL and browse the site (i.e. “http://www.audionews.ru/signup.php” to “http://www.audionews.ru”). If this doesn’t work and you still get the browser error message, see step #2 below. If this DOES works and the website loads, it may or may not update you to a completely different site where you may be able to find a SIGNUP or JOIN button/link. If you DO see one, click it; this will be your new working path. Go back to Tracker Checker and highlight the name of the tracker, click EDIT, and copy/paste this new path in the Signup URL window. If you DON’T see a signup link, but it looks like the site is operational, then it means they’ve probably just taken down the signup page altogether (but it could come back when they open to new members) so just let Tracker Checker keep checking it.

It’s always a good idea to keep checking the main page of a private tracker - some websites will give specific future dates to when they’re taking new registrations.

2. Either the website is shut down, or the tracker/website is temporarily down or offline. If the site is gone permanently, well there’s not much you can do about that. If the site is just down, you can just let Tracker Checker keep checking it, and maybe it’ll come back online. There’s no surefire way of telling if the site is gone or just down; website operators often take the site down to “hide” them when saturated or change to a different URL that is kept in high secrecy.

Tread carefully when editing entries. Sometimes the yellow warning sign is just because the signup page has been temporarily removed, or the site is down for maintenance. If you modify an existing entry, this becomes the NEW search parameter for Tracker Checker, and it will no longer look for the old signup page URL. You are safer to just add a different instance of the same private tracker (see below).

Tracker Checker 2 Tips

If at first you checkmark too many private trackers, you are going to be very busy in 60 seconds. The best way to use it is to know the sites that you specifically want to join and checkmark only those, or do only a few at a time. This way when Tracker Checker notifies you from the taskbar (with the pop-up bubble), you know it will be a site that you definitely interested in joining. And act on this hastily - you are not the only one using Tracker Checker 2.

Adding your own private trackers to the database gives you an enormous advantage at being able to get onto the signup page of those sites before others. This being because the list you modify is only YOUR list - nobody else will have it. The list provided with Tracker Checker is basically just a public list of known private trackers - and everybody is using this same list.

You can also create a different /signup.php and /join.php for the same site, in case they may use both or maybe they changed it because of too many hits, or you’re just shooting in the dark. To do this you’ll have to add a second instance (same as creating a whole new site entry) but call it something like BITME.ORG 2 for the name, and instead of the existing Signup URL being “http://bitme.org/setup.php”, use one called “http://bitme.org/join.php”. But I’m really stretching here, and I haven’t found this to work…yet.

Other private trackers not listed in Tracker Checker (but you can add them):

http://music-vid.com/signup.php
http://www.tvtorrents.com/signup.do
http://araditracker.com/account.php
http://www.torrentsrus.org/signup.php

E-Learning Torrent Trackers:

http://www.learnbits.org/signup.php
http://www.bitspyder.net/signup.php
http://docs.torrents.ro/signup.php
http://elbitz.net/signup.php

If you have your own updated “trackers.xml” file with new private trackers added to it, you are more than welcome to email it to us or post it here! Thanks in advance!

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