In our series of discussion about software installation we shall be discussing the different installation methods provided by shareware and software developers.
MSI stands for Microsoft Installer file, which is a file format which is recognised by Microsoft Windows by Microsoft Windows Installer technology.
When you run an MSI file it gets copied into a sub folder of your windows folder and is then available when you go into add and remove programs. You can then use the options provided e.g. repair or remove.
MSI files tend to be quite small as they don’t need any of the functionality to setup your program. Instead it just has a small list of things for Windows Installer to do.
Great Shareware and Freeware Software Downloads
I did a keep clean up job a few months back and deleted authors who had lots of programs on softtester. I can’t remember the figure I deleted from.
However I’ve noticed a lot of credit site listings etc again.
So I plan to limit the amount of programs an author can have on one email address.
I know that the author could then have more that one email address, but I figure since some sites require listings to be activated, its probably too much hassle for a spammer to have lots of email addresses. But I may be wrong.
At the moment I have 50 authors with over 100 programs some with a lot more than that.
I’m thinking 50 or 25 sounds about reasonable?
I guess I could limit things further and say they can only have x number of programs in a category.
Well I’ve now read 3 hours of my teach yourself C# book.
I’ve found it really hard to keep awake, not learnt that much so far.
Taken me ages to motivate myself to keep going.
Anyways, I thought I’d try and write a small program to see how far I could go.
I’m stuck already, having difficulty creating a function, or what I’d think of as a function in vb.
I googled and found someone saying that you can’t do functions in C#.
That seems weird.
So, I guess I’m a bit more motivated to read further in my book.
Otherwise I’ll not be able to finish my program 
by
JM
In the past few years I’ve seen many of my competitors and other software where theres a freeware or free version, which is a cut down version of the real thing. The real thing not being free.
Up till now I’ve considered other factors but not the SEO factor.
There would be more traffic, downloads and people using your software.
All of which have got to be good things.
The only down side I can think of is that people using a freeware program are possibly less likely to pay money for more features. Although I guess when I search for software I don’t start out just searching for freeware.
Apart from attracting extra sales, I’ve always considered then next biggest benefit to be, that your program gets tested more.
Has anyone else got anything to say on this subject?
by JM
I found this article and it got me thinking.
http://blog.tech-pro.net/entry/61/The_end_of_the_PAD_file
Having read this I don’t think its as bad as it sounds.
I mean sure, we will get less in bound links, but I think theres something to be said for people looking at shareware sites and perhaps buying your software.
by JM
Since I did the improvements to softtester earlier this year, I deciced to create a categories table with an ID.
Afterall I only have a set number of categories so it makes sense to have an ID instead of values in my pads table.
I have a pattern matchings function which takes my catgories and trys to match them with the pad file categories for each submission. I try removing spaces, odd symbols etc. However, its not till this week that I’m noticed how different sites use completely different categories from those shown in the pad spec.
I guess I should strictly just reject these pad files.
However up till now, I’ve thought my function wasn’t working and that somehow the submissions were correct and my function was flawed. I’m still not 100% convinced.
However, I’d like to create a complete list of categories which I can match with my categories.
Thoughts?
by JM
EDIT: I did some work yesterday on my function and I think my function is now much improved. Had 28 fails over night from friday to saturday and 3 last night / morning.
I wish I knew the answer to that question. But I hope to add comments to the post to help me do so.
I first tried google base when it was froogle.
If you don’t know what either is, let me explain.
Its basically a service provided by google to allow you to submit your products to googles products directory, you know when you click products on the google home page.
I think their must be some strategies to selling well.
Since I set up my shops sites I’ve had a handful of sales on one site. So this has given me confidence that I can sell well on both.
Using google analytics I’ve seen that people are using keywords to access product pages on my site.
I’ve tonight improved my datafeed used by google base to include some extra keywords.
Also I didn’t realise I was doing this already, but I’ve lifted my product description and put that in the feed a month ago I guess.
by JM
While soubmitted my new pad file I’ve obviouly been examining it on softtester.
Although I do look at pad file addition submissions and convert them to update submissions if they are re-submitted. Somehow I’ve now got 3 copies of mdbsecure on softtester. One from my old site and 2 from the new.
Although the 2 new ones are using the same author record.
Joy, just wonder how many duplicates other authors have
by JM
G, thats an expression we use in the UK “Can’t see wood for trees” meaning erm, well that were too close to something to see it. Hidden in plain sight.
Well I got denise (my wife) to test MDBSecure for me at the weekend.
I was looking through her notes at the start of the week and making some small fixes.
When I noticed what seemed to be a file permissions problem on a shared folder.
When I looked into the problem further I discovered the permissions were fine.
However, I wasn’t deleting the file, this occured after the file save dialog was shown.
I guess when i firt wrote the code I figured that the OS dialog would delete the file for me.
So the moral of the story is don’t assume bug reports are due to the user machines or conifguration.
I just wonder how many sales I’ve lost through this
by JM
I’m not going to name the submissions software here, but its the one we’ve been talking about.
I bought it today as I finished my latest changes to my program.
I guess I should have installed the trial version and used it for a bit first, however I don’t regret to decision to buy it.
However I think the program is far from perfect.
I’ve seen several error messages and I’ve had to close the program.
Also theres one thing which is an obvious bug which should have been spotted in testing.
I’ve found that I still have to use padgen, the online validator and trial and error to get my pad file perfect. I had hoped the program would be a comprehensive solution, as it does create the pad file for you. But theres some simple things which is causing my pad file to be rejected. Now that I have tried submitting I find that several sites say that you have to wait 25 days before you can re-submit.
I still haven’t got my pad file perfect, but theres a couple of sites at the top of the list which allow me to re-submit and modify.
So overall I guess the program is OK.
If the pad file creation stuff was taken out it would be better.
That functionality seems quite lacking, if it creates a pad file it should be valid.
However, I’ll post more comments as I progress.
I guess the pad files for my old program, I was just lucky or the spec has changed and sites are less tolerant.
by JM
