Gazelle is a free and open-source web framework geared towards private BitTorrent trackers. Originally developed by the staff of the music tracker What.CD and first deployed publicly in April 2008, it is written in PHP, JavaScript and uses a MySQL database. Although it was designed with a focus on music, it has been forked and modified for use by trackers covering films, television, video games, scientific data and other content categories.[1][2][3]
| Gazelle | |
|---|---|
| Developer | What.CD |
| Release | April 2008 |
| Written in | PHP, JavaScript |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Platform | Web application |
| Type | Web framework for private BitTorrent trackers |
| License | Unlicense |
| Website | whatcd |
| Repository | github |
History
editOrigin and design goals
editGazelle was first announced by What.CD in late 2007 as a project to replace the aging and buggy TBSource codebase that powered most existing private trackers at the time.[4] The first alpha trials of the software began in early 2008. According to the developers, the new framework was designed as a fast, flexible system that reduced load on servers and databases while increasing features, with the developers estimating that a site running Gazelle could handle approximately twice the number of users on the same hardware as a TBSource-based site.[4]
After roughly three months of alpha testing, What.CD migrated to a Gazelle backend in April 2008 in what TorrentFreak described as a semi-public release of the tracker and site software.[5] Although it had been built primarily with music in mind, the developers stated from the outset that Gazelle was not just for music trackers, and a non-music tracker, Ntorrents, was reported to be planning a switch to the codebase shortly afterwards.[5]
Open-sourcing on GitHub
editThe Gazelle project was originally hosted on a self-managed website by the What.CD developers. In mid-2013, the team migrated the public Gazelle repository to GitHub, stating that the previous Gazelle site had become severely outdated and a nuisance to maintain, and that GitHub provided a more convenient platform for source hosting, issue tracking, an installation wiki and API documentation.[6][2] The codebase has been released under the Unlicense and is written in PHP, JavaScript and MySQL.[1][3]
Aftermath of the What.CD shutdown (2016)
editOn 17 November 2016, What.CD shut down following a SACEM-coordinated raid by French authorities, in which twelve servers were seized; the music tracker's staff cited "recent events" as the reason for the shutdown and said that user data had been destroyed.[7][8] Shortly afterwards, the gaming tracker GazelleGames also took its servers offline preemptively.[7][8]
After the shutdown, the original What.CD repository on GitHub was no longer actively maintained: a review by the directory site Open Source CMS noted that the framework had last been updated in 2016 and warned that operators using the original codebase might run into security issues as a result.[3] Continued development of Gazelle has since been carried on through forks maintained by successor communities and other private trackers.[9][10][11]
Features
editGazelle organises torrent files under a single content entry that aggregates multiple encodes by format, source and resolution, rather than listing each release as a separate torrent; this approach was originally tailored to music albums but has since been adapted by forks for films, television series and other media.[1][11] Other features described by the developers and reviewers include a built-in JSON API, support for seeding ratio systems, theming, forums, request and bounty systems, and integration with the companion BitTorrent tracker daemon Ocelot.[3][9]
The official documentation provides instructions for installing Gazelle on Gentoo Linux or Ubuntu, and a Vagrant-based development environment ("VagrantGazelle") is available for local development without altering the host system; the developers recommend that anyone modifying the source have a working knowledge of PHP.[2]
Forks and successor projects
editFollowing the closure of What.CD, active forks were developed:
- Orpheus Network / OPSnet Gazelle is the codebase maintained by the team behind Orpheus Network, one of the music trackers founded after What.CD's shutdown. The fork has migrated the development environment to Docker, reorganised the database layer to support both MySQL and PostgreSQL, and integrates the Ocelot tracker daemon as a separately built image.[9]
- GazellePW (Gazelle Poster Wall) is a fork derived from the OPSnet codebase and re-targeted at film trackers, with cleanups, additional features and support for television sites.[11]
- BioGazelle, maintained by the open-data tracker BioTorrents.de, is described by its authors as "twice removed" from the original What.CD Gazelle, having been built on top of the security-hardened PHP 7 fork Oppaitime Gazelle and incorporating innovations from Orpheus Gazelle and AnimeBytes; it reorganises the source along the lines of the Laravel framework, places application logic outside the web root for security, and uses Manticore Search in place of Sphinx for indexing.[10]
Use and reception
editGazelle is widely considered the dominant codebase among large private trackers, and has been credited with shaping the modern look and feel of music-focused private trackers in particular. The directory site Open Source CMS describes Gazelle as a free and open-source web framework geared towards private torrent trackers, originally developed with a focus on music but adaptable to other use cases.[3] In its 2016 coverage of the SACEM raid on What.CD, Gizmodo described the site, which ran on Gazelle, as having developed one of the most modern torrent tracker backends, with painstaking sorting of releases by year, genre, bitrate and other parameters that turned the community into "a veritable Wikipedia for music nerds".[8]
TorrentFreak has repeatedly identified Gazelle-based sites as the leading private trackers in their respective content categories, including the film tracker PassThePopcorn, the television tracker BroadcasTheNet and the high-definition film tracker HDBits, all of which were described in 2025 as long-running Gazelle-based trackers operating at the top of the private-tracker ecosystem.[12]
Adoption
editGazelle has been widely adopted by private BitTorrent trackers across various content categories:[13]
- Music trackers
- What.cd (defunct, original developer)
- Redacted (redacted.ch)
- Orpheus Network (orpheus.network)
- JPopSuki
- Movie trackers
- Television trackers
- Other trackers
- GazelleGames (video games)
- Empornium
- AnimeBytes
Comparison with other software
editGazelle is one of several tracker software options available for private BitTorrent communities. Other notable platforms include UNIT3D (a more recent Laravel-based system), TorrentTrader, and various TBDev derivatives.[13] French technology forum Planète Warez described Gazelle as "by far, in my humble opinion, the best CMS" for trackers, noting it is "very lightweight" and can "accept 10,000 users with VPS at $25-30/month."[13]
See also
editReferences
edit- 1 2 3 "Gazelle by What.CD". What.CD. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 3 "WhatCD/Gazelle". GitHub. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Free Gazelle demo installation". Open Source CMS. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 Enigmax (11 March 2008). "A Sneak Peek at What.cd's Project Gazelle". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 Enigmax (22 April 2008). "BitTorrent Tracker Software "Gazelle" Debuts on What.cd". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- ↑ "What.cd's Gazelle on GitHub". Hacker News. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 Van der Sar, Ernesto (18 November 2016). "Music Group Confirms What.CD Raid, Claims Millions in Losses". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 3 Novak, Matt (17 November 2016). "Authorities Just Shut Down What.CD, the Best Music Torrenting Community". Gizmodo. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 3 "OPSnet/Gazelle". GitHub. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 "biotorrents/gazelle: BioTorrents.de's version of Gazelle". GitHub. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 3 "Mosasauroidea/GazellePW: Movie-based Gazelle". GitHub. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- ↑ Van der Sar, Ernesto (20 September 2025). "Filmmaker Tries to Unmask Private Torrent Tracker Owners through Cloudflare". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
- 1 2 3 "CMS pour Tracker" (in French). Planète Warez. 5 February 2022. Retrieved 28 April 2026.