This is a guest post on switching to Data Broker by Avatar
Many WoW players have used Fubar for a very long time, and with the recent news that its no longer being developed/updated due to the coming of Data Brokers, well many are left scratching their heads. So as I personally have made the move from Fubar to a Data Broker Display, I will walk you through your options and how to ensure a smooth transition.
First off it’s a good idea to pick up Fubar2Broker. This addon helps to ease the transition by allowing a majority of your old Fubar plugins to continue to work with the new Data Broker addons. Now that we have this little house cleaning addon up and running we are ready to choose our Fubar replacement.
There are many great options out there. For the purposes of this article I will briefly cover Fortress and ChocolateBar. However if you want more Data Display options I recommend going to this site for more information:
If you have never used a data broker, or a display panel addon before I will walk through a couple options for displays and some basic data feeds you can use with it.
Data Broker Displays
Fortress is a data broker display addon that replaces Fubar. However unlike fubar it makes each plugin or LDB data feed show up as its own individual block. Each block is movable to its own area, can be stacked, or they can be “tethered” together to simulate a bar style.
ChocolateBar is a more traditional replacement for Fubar due to the fact it is a bar. It also continues to have similar features including adding multiple bars, allowing you to align your plugins left, center or right. It also features drag and drop placement of your plugins to allow you to customize the look you are going for.
I ultimately decided on ChocolateBar for my Fubar replacement, as it offered all the same features I liked, had great customizability and was each to configure to my tastes.
Data Broker Feeds (aka Plugins)
BrokerCPU is a replacement for PerformanceFu. It displays all the same information, which includes FPS, Addon Memory usage, and Latency on the Data Broker Display. On hovering over it, it will also display the addon memory usage, which you can customize, I modified BrokerCPU to only display the top 10 addon memory hogs.
Broker_Currency is a replacement for MoneyFu, with some extra goodies. Broker will keep track of your positive cash flow and negative cash flow. But you can also have it show badge gains and losses as well. Also it will consolidate the currency tab of all your characters into one view to see what all your alts have for a total cash display.
Broker Repair replaces DurabilityFu. This plugin gives you an overall assessment of your gear durability, and provides you with It will also breakdown the cost of each piece of gear and how much it will cost to repair at different reputation levels (i.e. neutral, honored, etc.). Another nice feature is that it also allows you to auto repair and automatically sell junk items to vendors.
Broker GemGuild and Broker GemFriends are replacements for GuildFu and FriendsFu respectively. The only functionality that seems to be lacking from these is the ability to see notes. Both though provide similar icons and features as their old fubar counterparts.
GemGuild
GemFriends
One Fubar plugin I could not replace was FactionFu. I could not find a suitable plugin that had the same features, but with Fubar2Broker addon installed, FactionFu still works perfectly. I can’t say that for the long term, but it does its job for now.
I did find that many of my existing addons had some built in functionality with Data Brokers like Arkinventory letting you display bag usage, or ammo, and it even had its own currency option for display. XPerl, Bartender, Atlasloot, Omen and oRA2 also displayed on the data broker display without any additional configuration, so after installing a data broker you may see you instantly get additional functionality out of your existing addons.
Go to curse.com for a full list of all addons that currently are tagged for use by data brokers just follow this link. There are tons of options out there to explore:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/AdvSearch.aspx?lgvo=0&Category=data-broker&lu=All&mr=-1
Found a cool addon? Want to share a UI tip? In the mood to contribute a guest post? Have some ideas for future posts? Feel free to 
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Roger. Roger said: RT @mattycus: New NSUI post: Migrating to Databroker from Fubar http://bit.ly/180iR4 [...]
Tekkub does it again. Like all is addons LDB uses minimum resources for maximum efficiency. I migrated all my Fu stuff to LDB and been an happy camper ever since. HURRAH for Tekkub :D
I find that Broker_Factions fits in nicely (and in some ways exceeds FactionsFu):
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11020-BrokerFactions.html
Unfortunately, upon going to get the link to comment I see that the author will not be updating it any further. I might offer to take it on for maintenance purposes if nobody mentions are more suitable replacement for FactionsFu.
Karatheya´s last blog ..The Girlfriend Card
@Karatheya: You should go for it! If you have the ability, maybe re-write it if it’s needed or such.
To be quite honest, in place of two brokers for Friends and Guild, I use Broker_SocialState. This provides a tooltip similar to the one that AuldLangSyne did for Fubar – friends first, then guild info, and it includes notes added to the Friends info, as well as Guild and Officer notes.
Ara Broker Guild Friends (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11205-Ara_Broker_Guild_Friends.html) is also a good option to view guild + friends list and notes.
Fortress is also neat for its ability to individualize buttons and/or blocks leaving some always visible and others hidden until mouse-over.
Windsoar´s last blog ..Introducing Corrinna
I did a rather brief search after seeing this article, but can find no mention on the wowace site/forums or on curse that fubar is no longer being maintained/developed. Can you please link your source material?
Great post, but why such small images? The text currently gives a more info as the images, where I have to guess what you are trying to show!
Windsoar already mentioned Ara Broker Guild Friends, which is my LDB guild / friend plugin of choice, but he didn’t mention that Aranarth has published many other LDB plugins. They’re all simple, with very well laid out tooltips that provide lots of good information.
Ara Broker Reputations is what finally convinced me to give up Broker_Factions (from the ss I saw, it even resembles the old FactionsFu).
My personal favorite additional plugin of his is Ara Broker Tradeskills. It shows you all your tradeskills in the tooltip, which are also clickable to open them, and even shows the tradeskills of all your alts, also clickable, and linkable.
Great article. Like @Imalinata however, I would like to see an original article or other material that states that FuBar will no longer be updated. I’d also be interested in more details of the reasons why the switch to Broker. Thanks.
Thanks for the feedback all. Regarding the discontinuation of Fubar, I too was unaware of it being discontinued until I wrote my previous article on fubar plugins, where I was told by many respondents that cknight who is the author of Fubar is no longer supporting it and that mods are moving to LDB, hence this article and my own migration. For my next article I will make sure to provide Matticus with higher resolution images.
Also thanks to all for the suggestions on the LDB data feeds (plugins), I am definitely planning on trying some of those out, especially social stats.
Avatar´s last blog ..Unholy Death Knights: From the Lich to a Niche
Thanks for the article. I have been planning on changing over for a while now. Now I am all switched over.
Something that others might know about or want to know. I am not sure if it’s Broker_CPU Memory, but every second or so when I am running with full mods (I use Addon Control Panel to scale for raids) I get a little hitch. Using the memory broker, I can’t figure out which one is messing with me. And, honestly, Tekkub is a great mod maker and I doubt that it is the memory broker that is causing it. But, on the other hand,I was also using SLDT for another memory checker to be showing on my minimap and when I disabled that part of the plugin my hiccup went way down.
There must be a global event checker that runs regularly and I am wondering if having to scan a bunch of mods every second is slowing down the system. I imagine it would, but then again I cannot conceive the speed necessary to send information to a server and back in half a second either.
It might just be that the larger mods that I use when solo, like Quest Helper and Quest Guru are slowing things down when having to be checked by the resource checker. I imagine having to parse an extra 12 megs woth of data every second would clog it up.
If someone knows more about this I would love to know.
Thanks again for the article, all in all, I am very happy with the switch. I can’t stress enough Addon Control Panel as well. So, much easier switching between sets of mods.
@ Avatar – I went and read the comments from your previous article. The people who commented there didn’t include any source material to lend credence to their statements that fubar was no longer being developed.
I have seen the discussions on wowace about how many other addon developers were removing their fubar plugins and using the libdatabroker plugin instead which necessitates an addon to port them back into fubar. But I have never seen anything from the author/developer saying that fubar was obsolete and he was no longer maintaining it.
I’m still interested in seeing source material. Comments without sources are just opinions.
I Just thought its worth mentioning, that Titan panel can accept all Broker, Statblock, LDB, and SDLT Type info addons
Althouh i never liked titan since u cant control its width.
[...] Sorry MK I realise my comment was a bit tactless. No Stock UI has an excellent post about moving from Fubar to DataBroker. I made this move about 6 months ago and i’d never go back. The post has some decent [...]
Nice post. I’ll check out Fortress, it seems like a nice option.
Btw I’d like to get a plugin that would show my personal/team arena rating but can’t find one. Do you know if there’s anything like this?
[...] Sorry MK I realise my comment was a bit tactless. No Stock UI has an excellent post about moving from Fubar to DataBroker. I made this move about 6 months ago and i’d never go back. The post has some decent [...]
I use broker_Auditor, aka auditor2, it has options in it’s menu for auto sell (junk), auto-repair, and guild repair. Broker_SocialState as Taryble mentioned. Ara_Broker_Tradeskills for keeping quick access to my cooldowns and tradeskills for all characters (quick linking as well) on a server.
I also use Broker_AllXP for keeping track of my experience for all my characters , since i really don’t want that depressingly big bar sitting in my face when I’m on that final bit of grind for a level.
Well, as Karatheya already noted: Did you try Broker Factions (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11020-BrokerFactions.html) ?
For having notes on the guild info as well, I personally use Broker SocialState (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11440-Broker_SocialState.html) which shows both guild and friends at once.
This far I just love all those LDB feeds & displays, they are so much more .. personal, than old FuBar (which I loved as well). I also switched about half a year ago and luckily I don’t have to rely on Borker2FuBar any more with so many addons being developed/updated for LDB. As a display I use DockingStation (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11831-DockingStationDisplay.html).
@ Imalinata- Arrowmaster is the maintenance author for FuBar now, and in his post back in March on the Curse forums, he states that the framework that FuBar is based on (Rock) is no longer supported and is encouraging users to make the switch to data brokers. (source:http://forums.curseforge.com/showthread.php?t=7985&page=41)
I also want to recommend Bazooka ( for anyone that likes to control everything about their display bars :) I have found it is the most flexible bar for use with data brokers. http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/bazooka.aspx
I tried Fortress, Chocolatebar, and Carousel, but Bazooka worked the way that I wanted it to, more so than any of the others.
I use Auditor to monitor my cash flow, it’s very thorough.
I also use Titan Panel for my LDB Plugins, it supports them plus has standard ones that it comes with.
Lilith´s last blog ..L2Discipline: How About Them Stats?
@Karatheya – the degree to which I rely on FactionFu is so extreme that it is not unreasonable to say that this one addon is keeping me from (slowly, painfully, begrudgingly) moving away from Fubar alltogether. I’m one of those faction whores who has every zone with a linked faction and looks at them all the time. In fact I often wish FactionFu had a per-character profile so my alts didn’t have to have the same factions linked to the same zone. Yeah, I’m obsessive. But if you took over that addon you linked, I guarantee you I would be your biggest fan. Only without stalkery tendencies. Promise ^_^.
[...] Migrating to Databroker from Fubar from No Stock UI [...]
[...] be the “new improved” kid in town for plugins like this, and I found out about it from this post over on nostockui.com, so I decided to give it a whirl. It’s not bad, although I [...]