Failing to install on a mac?
 

I just put WoW on the MacBook Pro I inherited from my daughter. After playing a bit to make sure things worked, I downloaded the core pile of addons I've definitely decided to keep: Addon Control Panel, Altoholic, Auctioneer, Badboy, BadBoy Cleaner, FishingBuddy, Gatherer, GathererDBWoWhead, Lagbar, MoMo Critter Emote and its fan update, Postal, Silverdragon, SpeedyGonzales, TomTom. I Unzipped them one by one, and put the resulting folders in /Applications/World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns/ - as I have in the past with my Windows and my Linux box.

Of these, only Addon Control Panel, BadBoy, Badboy Cleaner, GathererDB:Wowhead. Lagbar, Postal, SpeedyGonzales, TomTom, and MoMo loaded - that's all that I see in the AddOn screen list available at the character selection screen. Out of 14 addons, only 9 are visible; I'm lacking Auctioneer and Altoholic most noticeably, Postal and SilverDragon next most noticeably, and Gatherer (tho the db loaded).

Clue? Why is this not working?

Make sure the addons Auctioneer and Altoholic are not in single folders with the addon name and a string of numbers behind it. IE: Auctioneer3285749, or something of the sort.

If you dl'd the Auctioneer Suite you should have 16 individual folders that MUST be put in your "AddOns" folder that way or else it won't load or even show up on the "AddOns" window on the character selection screen. Similarly, Altoholic currently has 22 separate folders to transfer to the AddOns folder. FishingBuddy has 7.

Check any addon you installed that didn't show up on the AddOns window for "Folder-in-Folder" syndrome (that's what we call it). Generally, all you have to do is open the folder and "cut" the folders out and paste them in the AddOns folder.

Many of the "larger" addons are built in a modular fashion. It is often easier for the author to update an individual module rather than the entire addon if there are problems.

If jeffy162's answer didn't solve the problem, post the full path to the *.toc file of each addon that doesn't appear in-game, eg:

/Applications/World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns/Gatherer/Gatherer.toc

Thanks!
 

This was, indeed, the problem. I'm so used to OSX doing The Right Thing that it didn't occur to me that telling the extraction program to put the extraction directly into the AddOn folder was a problem.

Much appreciated! (now my family - who all use that laptop in turn for playing WoW when not at a desktop - can all be annoyed by my AddOns. :D )

It's actually your extraction program's fault for extracting the files into an extra sub-directory with the archive's name, instead of directly into the directory you pointed it at. :p

Extraction program???
 

[blond moment] I don't know what you're talking about, I just double clicked it. [/blond moment]

OSX is integrated enough that really, that is all I did. If Linux can Do The Right Thing, surely OSX can!

*hides the kool-aid, she's clearly been drinking too much of it.*

I'd look and see if there is some way to get to the decompression programs' options and see if there is some way to have it "maintain folder structure" when decompressing. That's usually the culprit in other decompression programs.

The Windows ZIP extractor also places the ZIP file's contents into an extra folder named after the ZIP file by default. There is probably not a way to change the default behavior of these OS utilities, as they're pretty basic and limited to begin with.

If you deal with a lot of ZIP files, it's probably worth your time to install a third-party program like 7-Zip. Not only can you change its default behavior, but they support many other archive formats (eg. RAR, 7Z), and add "Unzip here" shortcuts to the right-click menu on supported archive files.

Eh. I'm clued enough it's not really a problem, now that I know what to look for. I put a faux directory in my home dir on the linux box to avoid having to click around to get to the wow addons dir to extract things to. That extractor DTRT - I say 'extract here' and it puts the folder of files correctly.

If I have my druthers, I'll never touch windows again.