Sounds like a strange topic for a 'show me' thread right? Well in truth this is a practice that has some importance when running a heavily modified game. Yet it rarely gets mentioned at all. Recently I've had a number of discussions with a few members about how they organize their plugins folder. I found it quite interesting to learn just how they were able to managed some large, or in some cases an absolutely massive collection of mods. I've notice that those who organize their plugins will do so either by the file creator or by the type of file, or sometimes both!

I'll start things off. Currently my plugins folder is 3GB, which I think is relatively modest in size, especially considering I've been playing the game for about 12 years now, on and off. Yet this still encompasses over 10,000 files & 1,700 folders. It's a lot to keep track of without some sort of labeling system. I also like to do a fair bit of modding with the reader so it's important for me to easily located files that I'm looking for without having to resort to searching. In the main plugins folder I have only a few folders, i.e. NAM, z___NAM, MMP's, terrain mods, a folder for recently downloaded lots I'm still testing out and finally the main folder containing the lots I use. I only have one such folder since I only working with one region and I keep the building sytle more or less consistent within that region.

In that sub folder I like organize files by their type/category. I use numbers to group the different types of files and use the list or details view in windows;


Then I modify each file using the reader so that they are grouped in the same category and the same area of that category. e.g. passenger trains stations are all together followed by freight train stations. Before I did this I found I either spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a particular lot or worse yet I would completely forgot that I even had that item if it was way down towards the bottom of a category and squeezed in between a bunch of unrelated lots. This problem was especially pronounced for highrise buildings. Afterwards I organize the same type of building based on their capacity/size. i.e smaller to larger for all transit stations, schools, hospitals, police & fire stations, power & waste plants and even stadiums.


So I'd like see how just how elaborate of a system some of the more experienced players use. Hopefully this thread can also serve as a learning tool to those trying to develop and manage a large suite of plugins.