Hello, I want to start with a new group of students and help them install Rack but obviously something has changed since last year because I don’t find the “add” button next to each plugin on library.vcvrack.com anymore. At first I thought it could be a browser issue but I have the same problem with both Firefox and Chrome.
Can someone help?
Click on the “plugins” word in the main screen, in the upper right.
Still can’t see any “add” or similar button. How is it supposed to look like?
Is the user supposed to download all free plugins manually from each developer’s website now?
no.
can you make a screen grab ? (are you logged in?)
It’s not “Add” — it’s “Subscribe” (or “Unsubscribe” to “Remove”).
Click on “Subscribe” in the first column of the plugins list. Once subscribed, requires a restart of Rack, then update after you get a red dot in the Library menu. After updating, restart rack then the new modules appear in the browser.
Subscribing to entire plugins from the Plugins list certainly works, but it is not a good place to browse from . If you don’t know the plugin ahead of time, you can’t really tell what it might do. But if you click on a plugin name from that list, then it takes you to a page dedicated to that plugin that lists all the modules, and provides a link at the top to subscribe (unsubscribe) the entire plugin. For example, here is the top half of the Venom plugin page:
There is another way to get to a subscribable plugin page, but it is not as intuitive as I would hope. From the Library module browser, if you click on the plugin name instead of the module name, then it does a plugin search returning all the modules from that plugin - this does not do you any good.
But if you click on a module, and then from within the module page you click on the plugin link it will take you to the desired subscribable plugin page. For example, the circled link in the Bernoulli Switch page below takes you to the subscribable Venom plugin page.
I plan to submit a library feature request - I think clicking on a plugin name within a module search result list should take you to the same subscribable plugin page.
It seems there is an issue with my institution’s network. Using a 4G connection the subscribe/unsubscribe buttons came back. How do you explain this?
It’s likely some policy your network admins have implemented to disallow certain types of traffic (whatever it is the VCV site sends to subscribe). Very common with educational institutions.
You’ll need to talk to the administrators of your institution’s network about allow-listing vcvrack.com. Since you’re doing this for the educational benefit of your students, they should be amenable to doing so.
Oh, for sure the user experience is just awful. didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.
Are you (or they) registered with VCV Rack and logged in (to library.vcvrack.com) on the computers that you want to install it on?
The upper right corner should say either “Register / Log in” or “Log out”.
I am indeed registered and logged in.
I guess the subscription buttons rely on a specific IP port. Does anyone know which one? This might help our sys admin to solve the issue.
did a little testing and found that if you block shopify the button fails to show (on all pages). Could your sysadmin be blocking shopify?
If you can get into the developer console you may be able to see what is failing to load
last updated and created may also be empty in this case, does this line up?
