New to Customizations - General Guidance Advice Required

[hackzaw]

Have had V7 of Sage for several months now. I haven't added any customizations at all, but it's something I'd like to start exploring. It's all a bit daunting at first read though. So I'd like to know two things to all the seasoned veterans out there:

1) What steps should be taken prior to adding any plugin's or customizing? (Backing up entire Sage installation directory? Backing up specific files?)

2) Where should one start with a vanillia install? It looks like there's different theme's, different UI's, and a variety of tools that require are dependant on something else install previously. What would you do with a brand new install, and what plugin's are essential or one's you really like and find useful?

[SomeWhatLost]

I didn't do any backing up... probably should of... but haven't had an issue yet... well, none that made me wish I did a back up...

BMT is a must...
I really like Diamond
sageTCPserver is a must (if your are also using CQC)
I like the MyMovies plugin
the back on EPG guide is a must for me...
I like the signal strength plug in...
commercialskip is a must

don't worry about dependencies... sage takes care of those for you...

[GKusnick]

You should be backing up your Sage installation regularly, whether or not you install any plugins. But if you're about to start playing with plugins you haven't used before, that would be a particularly good time to back up.

You may read some posts that suggest particular files to back up, but in my opinion there's no good reason not to back up the entire directory. Better to back up more than you need than to find out the hard way that something crucial is missing from your backups.

Be aware that Sage makes no guarantees about the quality of the available plugins. Many of them are written by amateurs. Before installing any plugin, read through the author's posts (particularly their posts in the Studio forum) to get a sense of whether they're careful, meticulous people who know what they're doing, or are just throwing something together haphazardly.

I would say that instead of just installing whatever plugins the cool kids are using, decide for yourself what you want from your Sage system that the base product doesn't provide, and then look for plugins that provide those missing features. Be conservative. Going nuts with plugins just because you can will not necessarily lead to a better Sage experience; you could just end up with a lot of confusing options and dialogs and unexpected behavior, and no idea what's causing it.