If you have played EVE so long that you have run across the pain of setting up your profiles again due to clearing your cache, or reinstalling, then you might want to consider making backups of your profiles. Even if you have not experienced that, imagine having to setup your UI, Overview, and everything else from scratch. It's not a pretty picture. This articles I'll go over the profile folder, it's files, and how to maintain them effectively not destructively.
Profile Folder
Now let's move on to the heart of our settings, the profile folder. Keep in mind you will not see the "AppData/Application Data" folder if you do not have "Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives" from the View tab, in your Folder Options set.
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Local\CCP\EVE
Windows Vista/7: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE
MacOS X*: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/EVE Online/p_drive/Application Data/CCP/EVE
*OS X users that use multiple accounts with CloneMaker will have multiple EVE Online folders in the Application Support folder, so make sure to maintain each one.
In the profile folder there will be a directory for each instance of EVE you have installed. If you just have the Tranquility client installed, the folder will be named something like, c_program_files_(x86)_ccp_eve_tranquility. If you have a Sisi client installed, you will see multiple folders labeled with the server name. Each server instance will have two folders here. One with the checksums file, and the other with all of the setting files.
Cache and Setting Files
So let's go into the setting folder, which is usually labeled with the server name (i.e. ccp_eve_tranquility, ccp_eve_singularity). In the folder we see the cache and settings folders. First off I want to point out if you ever need to clear your cache, this is where it's all stored. Simply delete everything in the cache folder, and move on. If you do it through the launcher or game, say goodbye to your settings folder as well.
In the settings folder we have all our settings for all the characters that have been logged into the client. Let's go over the files and their uses:
Browser Folder: Used to store in-game bookmarks and IGB (un)trusted site lists
core_char_*: Character setting files
core_user_*: User specific settings
core_public_*: Front page advert links, and settings
prefs: Basic client settings, and local machine settings
If you ever wondered where the in-game browser bookmarks were saved, now you know. The core_char files are all labeled by CharacterID. If you have used a lot of characters and sold some over the course of time you can remove their core_char file from this folder. If you don't know the character's ID number, you can simply use the EVE API to find out:
Example: https://api.eveonline.com/eve/CharacterID.xml.aspx?names=Some%20Name
Just replace "Some%20Name" with your character's name, using "%20" as a space if needed.
In the same scenario of cleaning out old user data, you may have lots of old account names on the login screen that you don't use anymore. To remedy this open up the core_public__.yaml file with something like Wordpad or Text Editor. Go to the bottom of the file, and you'll see all the account names in the list. Simply remove the ones you aren't using anymore, and save the file.
Backup and Restore
As you can see backup is a fairly simple process of backing up the entire settings folder. If you have multiple server instances to backup, I would suggest backing up the ccp_eve folder instead after deleting the cache folder. When using a backup to restore settings, make sure to start the new client first, and move the backup files into the profile folder that the client has created. This will allow you to put the files in the correct settings folder, and also allow the client to initialize as intended on the first run.
As usual, I hope some players find this to be helpful. Enjoy, and fly safe. o/
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