I'm trying to get into making armour but I can't seem to find an up-to-date guide on which versions of the .nif softwares to install. I am not sure whether those guides, which are dated 2011 and also refer to Morrowind or Oblivion, are really applicable today. I get that Blender 2.49b is compulsory so I will use that for import/export while I do the actual work in Blender 2.71.

So if you have released a mod for Skyrim, which versions do you use of:

Python

NifSkope

Nifscripts

PYFFI

?

I am going to try:

Python 2.6.6.

NifSkope 1.1.3

PyFFI 2.1.11

NifScripts 2.5.9

Or does it not matter which versions I use?

It matters, and yes, those are the current / correct versions to use.