After a sneak peak and trial run last month, the what.cd team has finally made a semi-public release of the Gazelle tracker and site software, by doing its first large scale roll-out on its own site.

Gazelle, as we reported back in November, is an attempt by the group to replace the aging and buggy TBsource. It is intended as a fast, flexible system, that reduces load on servers and databases, whilst increasing features.

Over the weekend, what.cd was upgraded, so that all of its roughly 43,000 members could try it. Whilst there were initial bugs, including a problem with IRC channel password keys, everything seems to be running smoothly now.

More of a problem was a DDOS the site experienced when it had just gone live to its members. The attack which lasted over 4 hours and pulled 100Mb/sec, frustrated a number of the site’s users.

Also a source of frustration for many was a misunderstanding over a ‘freeleech’ offer. Done as a stress test, it was canceled after 6 hours , the announcement about it said it could last 24.

Many users who grabbed stuff they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise in an attempt to increase their ratio, started downloads and still had them going when it was stopped, which lead to some friction between staff and users. As always, the golden rule is to never download something you don’t want in an attempt to boost ratio.

However, Gazelle is not just for music trackers. Another site, Ntorrents, will be changing over to it shortly, according to an administrator there. This will be as much of a test in many ways for Gazelle as this weekend’s launch on what.cd was. This time though, it will be testing its viability beyond music trackers.

The developers have not yet announced a release date beyond ‘when all the major bugs are fixed’. Stay tuned for more.