Software Promotion & SEOThis blog covers a range of topics concerning the SoftTester Shareware/ Software Download site. Topics include software product releases as well as SEO and software development information and tips.

Forum Admin

I’ve recently submitted Ideaspad to Tucows and after several days (ten I think) I got a message saying my software had been rejected. This was quite a shock as I’ve not been rejected anywhere else!

The reason being that I did not have a clickable link to the Framework download (when the ‘not present’ message appears).

As I’m working to a budget, I’m using the Setup project to create my installer. Although it does allow you to create a check for the framework (and MDAC) it doesn’t allow you to add a URL, as it’s just a text message.

For several days I’d been hunting around trying to find a technical solution, making postings in several places.

In the end I’ve had to just add a message saying ‘please see the ReadMe.html for help’.
This file then checks to see if the framework is installed and provide download links.

Has anyone else had similar problems or are you all using install shield?

motherswan
I am also using the .NET setup project to create the setup.exe. The last time I looked at Tucows they had unacceptable restrictions, so I didn’t submit. I have instructions and links for the framework on both my product information and download pages. Is any more information available from Tucows about how to satisfy their requirements?

Forum Admin
I don’t have a link to the Tucows requirements, but it’s somewhere in the author resource centre pages.

What do you find unacceptable?

motherswan
They’ve changed their website a lot, and now they reject the password they gave me. But from what I can remember, there was a something about the way the .NET application had to be installed that they couldn’t handle.

Forum Admin
Weird.

With the sites which take their time, I’m treating them with caution, just adding one product at a time.

I think that as I was initially rejected for something at the start of my installation, I MAY be in for more rejections.

I guess they would just have found a problem and stopped there.

I’ll let you (and this thread) know how I get on.

PS. When I was searching round on the newsgroups for answers, I did find a few people saying that they didn’t allow DotNet, then the guy emailed to complain and then got listed. Hopefully things will have improved.

Forum Admin
I have found another approach.

Use QSetup, it’s free and extremely flexible.

You don’t need the Windows Installer files (normally included in your distribution file).

You configure it to perform checks on the machine, I need show a Readme file, which has JavaScript, VBScript to tell the user whether they have the framework installed, MDAC.

I’ve also recently added a uninstall questionnaire, which brings up a web page on my site.

Ideaspad - An Award winning information manager for home and professional use

by JM

I’ve often thought that for my small sites and Content Management System (CMS) is a bit over the top.

However, since I first noticed that I had lots of pages errors and lots of dead links, I thought it would be a good idea to have some way of easily managing external links on my sites.

A few days ago all my links and support text were hard coded in my ASP / PHP pages. I guess I could have just altered each page. However I thought in the long term it would be a good idea if this data was held in a database.

I therefore setup on PHP admin pages and have put most of links / supporting text in a mysql database. I not have a standard script which adds this content the each page, via a SiteTag and PageSection tag / variable.

I’ve got about 250 records

Throughout this task, I keep having doubts as to whether all this work will make it easier and whether all this time spent is worthwhile.

I’m now not every sure that outbounds links is that important any more.

Thoughts?

Ideaspad - An Award winning information manager for home and professional use

by JM