Helping Users Sync to Server's Mod Versions

[Yorae]

I'd really like to be able to use some kind of tool to help my players sync up their modlists with the server.

Is there an easy way to sync my latest updated versions with my players? This has become a real issue, as many of my players are not very tech savvy, and telling them "x and y have updated, please update your clients accordingly" results in extreme amounts of frustration for them.

I thought that this was what the private pack option in the launcher was for, but seeing that "private packs" are subject to the same restrictions as public ones, it looks like that will not be a useful solution for us.
(Since we run, for example, Forestry, and Forestry is explicitly not allowed to be hosted as part of a formal modpack, per Sengir.).

Should I set up a dropbox sync and teach users how to stay updated using that? I'd rather not have to have them install any additional software if at all possible, and the learning curve will need to be very low, or my users will simply give up. Any advice is appreciated.

 

[TruculentMC]

Short answer: Not easily.

Long answer: Most mods don't allow you to redistribute them even for private use without permission, so if you don't get permission, the only way to have someone sync their client is have each and every enduser explicitly download the correct version of each and every mod themselves.

 

[Yorae]

That's pretty much an untenable situation. =\

I can make blog posts updated with links or something to the mods when they update and instructions on how to update, but any engineer knows what end-users are like - that won't work. Right now I pretty much have to hand-hold every user on the server every time anything changes an walk them through the update process every time. It wastes an extreme amount of time, both mine and theirs, and everyone winds up frustrated and annoyed.

I was hoping (and excited) that we'd be able to solve this with the new private pack feature, considering that is the exact niche it is supposed to fill, but it seems like it is being hamstrung pretty brutally. What's the point of even having it around?

Edit: If I were to manage to obtain private pack permission for all mods we wanted to use, how would I then go about creating a private pack?