Follow @OpenCandy

Published September 28, 2011

In the desktop software world, the one thing that strikes the most fear in the hearts of developers of great applications is (cue the dramatic music) — DROP-OFF! Drop-off happens for a variety of reasons but causes the same end result: your software is never used. Worse, in our research, up to 40% of downloaded software is never even installed! Ouch!

So let’s explore some common issues that contribute to higher drop-off, or put another way: Why aren’t people successfully installing my software?

The Download Process (It certainly is a process…)

I won’t detail the importance of making sure your download is easily accessible from your site and syndicated to safe, popular download sites. You’ve done all that, so where and why are they dropping off? The fact is that many users, even today, are totally confused about what to do after downloading a file. Yes, shocking… but true.

Part of the solution is to help people understand how to initiate your installer by providing browser and (even better) OS-specific download landing pages with information about what to do next. Take Dropbox as a great example of how to do it right.

Install Initiated

Next comes the crucial point of guiding the user through your installation process while providing appropriate disclosure(s)—such as your End User License Agreement—and any other screens that add value to their experience.

The “classic” ‘Welcome Screen’ that says “Hey, this is ACME Software! You ready to install? Okay then, CLICK NEXT!” is unnecessary. Instead, for example, you can combine the welcome screen with your EULA. Provide users options to make informed choices, but don’t overburden them with 20 installation screens. “Default” or “quick” installation options help less-tech savvy users to easily and successfully install your software, while providing an “Advanced” option allows app-addicts total control. The bottom line is: Eliminate unnecessary screens. If that’s not possible, consolidate screens — without overwhelming people.

NOTE: If you include or recommend third-party software in your installer, you must provide the ability to easily opt-out of such offers on an install screen. While OpenCandy’s Software Network Policies are requirements for working with us, they’re also a great blueprint that any developer can use to ensure a safe & positive user experience.

Prerequisite What?

If your software requires prerequisite software, make it easy for users to install programs they don’t have. At the most basic level, ensure your installer detects whether necessary prerequisites are already installed! Be aware that the more prerequisites you need to install during your software’s installation, the higher the chance of a problem occurring and the lower the likelihood of a successful installation.

First Launch aka SHOWTIME!

Your software is now installed and the user has launched it for the first time. What do you do? Provide users with information about how to use the MOST important feature(s) so they can quickly get value from using your software.

A few ways to engage users at first-launch:

• Launch a guide on your website
• Walk through with screenshots
• Display a video
• Guide them to the help file

TechSmith does a great job with Snagit of handling first-launch by asking if you’re a new user. If you click yes, it loads their website and a screencast to quickly get you up to speed:

Show people how to use your software to solve the problem they have. At the very least, tell them where to get help.

Turning Users Into Evangelists

The ease of discovering, downloading, initiating an install, successfully completing the install, and getting someone to launch your software, are all part of what I call the “Software Courting Ritual”. It can turn someone merely interested in your software into a passionate, engaged user that EVANGELIZES it! Make your *total* user experience delightful and the success should follow.

That’s it for now. Good luck! Let us know in the comments what has worked to lower your drop-off and have fun creating happy users!

PS: Here are some great articles about user experience in relation to marketing:

• Marketing IS User Experience by Hillel on Jackson Fish Market blog
• Top 10 Tools to Measure User Experience by Giovanni Calabro on Pragmatic Marketing
• What marketing executives should know about user experience by Nick Myers on The Cooper Journal (Don’t let the title scare you off as it almost did me ;) — you don’t need to be a “marketing exec” to read or appreciate the post.)

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for SweetLabs

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: Neither Dr. Apps, OpenCandy or SweetLabs received compensation for the creation or posting of this content from any third-party services or software mentioned within.

Follow @OpenCandy

Published September 16, 2011

Recently my colleague Alastair and I posted “19 Twitter Tips for Software Developers” and concluded by saying we’d follow up with a post highlighting some awesome Twitter tools. Which brings us to the following list of apps, tools, and services I’ve found invaluable for anyone aiming to get the most out of Twitter.

These tools enhance your Twitter experience by filling in the gaps within Twitter’s current native offerings, namely: better historical search, user analytics, sentiment analysis, tweet scheduling and more. Most of the tools are free, but some offer a free version with limited capabilities and an affordable “pro” or “premium” version with enhanced features. Enjoy!

TweetDeck

First a preface… If you plan to, or are already heavily using Twitter, you are better off using a standalone app instead of Twitter’s native web GUI. Thankfully, there are tons of third-party Twitter clients available for pretty much every platform and device on the planet.

One of the most popular clients, and the one I’ve been using for the last few years, is TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a free and powerful multi-platform Twitter client. It provides a multi-paned interface that easily lets you add columns which display information you choose, such as your followers’ tweets, @mentions, DMs, Twitter searches (the modern day “equivalent” of Twitter Track, RIP) and more.

TweetDeck also supports multiple accounts (as well other services like Facebook). There are way too many features and services tied into Tweetdeck to mention here, but I wanted to scratch the surface. TweetDeck was once a third-party app, but the company was snatched up by Twitter in May.

      NON-shameless plug:

      If TweetDeck is too heavy for your needs, consider a more “lightweight” Twitter client. I’m a
      bit biased, but Tweeki which was built using *and* is distributed through the Pokki
      platform (made by SweetLabs), is not only beautiful — as evidenced from tweets by people
      using it — it contains the right features for beginning tweeters and those who want
      to tweet quickly and get real-time notifications on their taskbar. Note that Pokki
      is only available for Windows 7 right now, but XP/Vista and even Mac
      support will come in the future.

FriendOrFollow

FriendOrFollow is a free, easy-to-use web service which enables you to input your Twitter handle (…or someone else’s) and get back a list of people whom: you’re following but aren’t following you back (“Following”), “Fans”– people who follow you that you don’t follow back (yet), and “Friends” — people you follow whom also follow you. FriendOrFollow also allows you to export the “Following”, “Fans”, or “Friends” lists to a CSV file.

DoesFollow

DoesFollow is a dead-simple, free service that shows you if Twitter user ‘A’ follows user ‘B’ and vice versa. DoesFollow recently added the ability to show you whether a Twitter list you specify contains a specific Twitter user. Check out Damon Clinkscales (@damon), the creator of DoesFollow on Twitter.

Social Mention

Social Mention offers one of the most comprehensive real-time social media search and analytics services I’ve seen – for free! It scans over 75 – mostly — social services for the keywords (or Twitter username) you search for and gives you an at-a-glance look at the “strength”, “sentiment” ratio, “passion” and “reach” of the query.

The real-time search results page Social Mention provides also features a more detailed breakdown of sentiment (positive, negative, neutral), top keywords, top users, top hashtags (e.g. #software) and sources (e.g. StumbleUpon, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) related to your search.

You can also setup Social Mention to send email alerts or subscribe to an RSS feed for your searches, as well as export the results to a CSV file. All that and they also have an API, as well as an easy way to embed a “query” widget on your website.

Snap Bird

Snap Bird is a free Twitter search service that goes beyond what’s currently provided by Twitter’s native search (RIP Summize!). Simply input a Twitter handle, sprinkle in some keywords and let Snap Bird do the magic of finding the (public) tweet you know exists but can’t seem to re-discover. If you want to connect Snap Bird to your Twitter account you can also run searches to find old DMs and a few other neat tricks.

TweetEffect

TweetEffect is a rather unique tool in the Twitter universe because it aims to provide insight into the effect specific tweets have on your “followership.” Simply enter your Twitter handle and it scans your tweets to (loosely) determine whether certain tweets caused people to follow or unfollow you. I think some people might construe TweetEffect as a novelty service; but I believe real value of TweetEffect is the data it provides that could help you better shape the type of content that resonates with your “audience”. Don’t sleep on TweetEffect.

Buffer

Buffer is a nifty new tool/service in the market that allows you to create and schedule tweets to help you space out the timing of tweets so you don’t inundate (and possibly turn off) your followers or even possibly discourage new people from following you. Buffer also serves up randomly generated tweets (mostly motivational in nature) that you can choose to add to your “buffer”. Buffer offers specified times during the day to send your tweets or you can customize the times manually. At Buffer’s current rate of user growth, I expect to see a lot more from them in the future. (That, or Twitter buys them… Or bakes in a scheduling service they create).

Buffer tip: For software developers, consider using Buffer for announcing new software releases — using different messaging, and posted in between other tweets so you don’t bombard your followers with the same “themed” tweets — to maximize the possible number of people who will see your tweet, which hopefully translates into more people visiting your site and downloading your software! Remember, not everyone is in the same time zone. ;)

That’s it for now! There are so many tools, apps and services I couldn’t squeeze in here, so please share what you use in the comments!

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for SweetLabs

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: Tweeki is made by SweetLabs. Neither Dr. Apps, OpenCandy or SweetLabs received compensation for the creation or posting of this content from any third-party services or software mentioned within.

Published September 1, 2011

As a desktop app or web developer, there’s always that “one” time you need a “second set of eyes” to help you quickly fix a piece of code that’s causing you headaches, or those times when you simply need to collaborate with someone. This is exactly why every developer needs at least one great code sharing or “paste” site in their arsenal. These services allow you to easily upload text (code) to a website for public (or private) viewing. Sometimes called “code sharing” or “code snippet” services, they are most commonly known as “pastebins.”

Any ole “pastebin” service has standard features like syntax highlighting and archiving, so I honed in on some that support advanced functionality like code compilation, debugging and more. Here are four of the best “code sharing” services that should be on every developer’s short-list and added to your toolkit.

1 – Ideone

Ideone (which is Italian for “great ideas”), would like to be known as an “online midi IDE and debugging tool” instead of a paste service. Sounds like a legitimate request since Ideone boasts the ability to compile, run and debug code from over 40 programming languages! They also have an API which has been used to create mobile apps as well as some really nifty things like “Run This!” which lets you run snippets from your blog. Ideone doesn’t support password-protected pastes that can be shared (you can make a paste that only you can see though) or diffs, but depending on your situation those may be minor quibbles when you consider how useful their offering is.

2 – Gist

If you’re familiar with GitHub, the web-based hosting service for developers using the Git version control system, than you may know Gist. Gist is Github’s code paste/sharing service which is tightly integrated with the GitHub platform. Gist leverages GitHub’s architecture such that all gists are automatically git repositories. This means you get versioning and the ability to fork built right in! Thus, every gist is also reusable as a git repository (little recursion there). In addition, Gist also supports private gists, diffs and SSL.

3 – Codepad

Codepad, like Ideone is unique in that it’s not just a pasting service – it’s also an online compiler/interpreter. Currently Codepad supports 13 languages, private pastes (not password protected, private just means a noindex tag is used to prevent indexing by search engines) and you can choose whether you want to execute the pasted code or not. There’s also a Codepad Vim plugin and Emacs integration available. Check out their about page for some cool details about the service.

4 – Pastebin

The “original” pastebin service established in 2002, Pastebin now boasts of more than 8 million active pastes (they say 1/3 of all pastes are private). Pastebin supports syntax highlighting for more languages than any other pasting service I’ve seen. Pastebin has desktop apps for Windows and Mac, as well as browser extensions and mobile device apps (iOS, WebOS and Android) as well as an API so you can build your own app or service. Be sure to check out the “Trending Pastes”, you never know what type of interesting things you’ll find there (admittedly most are non-code related).

Missed a mention for a pastebin service you love? Let us know in the comments which one we left out and why you love it!

Happy pasting, sharing and collaborating!

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for SweetLabs

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps, OpenCandy or SweetLabs has received compensation from the makers of any software mentioned for the creation or posting of this content.

Image source: Geek and Poke — The Real Coder, http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2011/02/the-real-coder.html

About this series

This article is part of a series of articles about software marketing for developers. Follow this easy-to-understand guide to improve the visibility of your website, increase distribution of your software and grow your user base.

In this series:

   Part 1 – Make your site convert
   Part 2 – Distribute your download
   Part 3 – On-page SEO for Software Developers (this page)

Introduction to SEO

Search engine results are clearly a key factor in driving software distribution. As most developers can attest, a huge percentage of website visits are driven directly from search results; which means if you want to improve distribution, you need to optimize your site for great search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your web site’s visibility in search engines so it shows up closer to the top of organic (non-paid/non-ad) search results when someone queries keywords related to your site or software. Search engines constantly test and tweak the “signals”, or the data they use to rank the relevancy of sites and pages, which is what makes SEO as much art as dynamic science.

The closer to the top of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) your software shows up, the higher the chance of someone clicking through to your site. A recent study by Optify, conducted in December 2010 using data from organic keyword searches, found that on average the #1 search result receives 36.4% of clicks, followed by 12.5%, 9.5% and 7.9% for the second, third and forth positions.

Search results are determined by the relevancy of a web-page in relation to the search query and the “authority” the site or page has. Authority equals trust, and while little is known about how exactly search engines calculate authority — the number and quality (authoritativeness) of backlinks to your site is definitely a key factor.

SEO is a combination of “on-page” and “off-page” factors. In this guide we’re focusing on SEO techniques to employ on your site (i.e. on-page SEO). Effective on-page SEO will help you with your off-page SEO, which we’ll cover in another article about building links back to your site.

What follows is an overview of some of the best ways to maximize your site’s on-page SEO.

Keywords

Know your keywords. Google provides a great keyword tool to show how much traffic is generated by different keywords that relate to your software/site. Based on this information, you can determine the relative importance of various keywords related to your software. You can also use this information to structure your site and content (e.g. URLs, title tags, H1s, bolded text, etc) for better search engines rankings.

When starting a new site, it’s easier to rank higher by targeting keywords that are less competitive, i.e. keywords that aren’t in great demand by other sites. Perhaps more importantly, when choosing keywords think about the words that someone would use to search for a solution to the problem your software solves, instead of keywords that are all related to the features and functionality that your software has. If you want to get an idea of what keywords are driving the most traffic for your competitors check out Alexa.

Content

Your goal is to write easy to understand content that includes your target keywords. This isn’t about trying to stuff as many keywords you can on a page – it’s about writing copy that naturally includes your targeted keywords. A general rule of thumb is to use your targeted keywords 2-3 times for a short page and 5-7 times on a longer page. Check out this SEOMoz article about perfecting on-page keyword targeting.

Search engines and users love sites that deliver fresh content, so think about starting a blog to help bring in new and repeat visitors. Most importantly, never “lock” important content in file formats that search engines have trouble crawling (Flash, even AJAX can be a problem — Google offers guidance on ensuring AJAX is crawlable, etc).

Remember, content isn’t king; original, relevant, high-quality content is king.

Site architecture

Your site architecture determines how easy it is for search engines to crawl and users to find your content. The “flatter” the site architecture, the better. Meaning, the fewer levels it takes to get to content, the better off you’ll be. Your goal should be to make all of your content accessible within three clicks. Your most important content, including your software download, should be one click away. Check out this post which includes a video about site architecture.

Site speed

Although site speed is currently a very,very small factor in your site’s rankings, ensuring your site is as fast as possible creates a better user experience. It also speeds the time it takes for search engines to effectively crawl your site and for users to load pages. KISSMetrics published an infographic which illustrates how slow site speed increases the rate of users abandoning a site/page. They found that “40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load” and that “A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.”

A couple of ways to increase your site’s speed (and save on bandwidth) include: keeping image files as small as possible without losing quality, minimizing the number and size of Javascript libraries your site uses (Google offers hosted libraries you can use), tighter “or” cleaner HTML and CSS code (try a CSS minimizer), and using Gzip to compress pages (works on Linux and Windows web servers). Google has a page dedicated to tools and services designed to help make the web faster. Yahoo offers a great tool for measuring site speed called YSlow which works in Firefox, Chrome and Opera. It tests webpages and assigns grades (A-F) to different factors that influence speed so you can figure out what changes to make to increase performance.

Page title tag

The title tag tells search engines and site visitors what a page is about and is one of the most important factors for on-page SEO. Use your chosen keywords here, with the most important keywords as the first words of the page title. The page title is also what users see on a SERP, although most engines limit what they show to around 65 characters along with a short description of the page (see Meta Descriptions). While not absolutely necessary, you can include the name of your site or company in the page title; just make sure it’s appended to the END of the URL.

      Example: You make a free application to help users backup their Windows system.
      Note this is a highly competitive category of software with many established products.

      Best:
      Windows Backup Cloning Software Free | ABCSoftware

      Good:
      Windows Backup Software Free | ABCSoftware – Makers of Great Windows Software

      Bad:
      ABCSoftware – Makers of Great Windows Software – Free Windows Back Software

If you’re aiming to get people to download your Windows’ backup software, put the right keywords first!

Headline Tag (H1) and other header tags

The headline tag (H1) is used for the main headline of a page and usually matches the page’s title tag, but it doesn’t have to. The header tag doesn’t carry as much weight for rankings as previously thought, but it’s still important to use so people can easily see the main topic of the page. Make sure you only use one <H1> tag per page as Google has been known to penalize pages that use multiple h1s. Other header tags (H2, etc) help you semantically structure your content, but won’t do anything to increase rankings.

      Example: You have a piece of software for downloading photos from Flickr.
      You decide to target the keywords: “download photos” “flickr”.

      Good:
      <h1>Download Flickr Photos Quickly & Easily</h1>

      Not-so-good:
      <h1>Learn How You Can Quickly & Easily Download Photos from Flickr</h1>

URL structure

URLs are incredibly important in determining how a page ranks. Ideally, you should structure your URLs so that the most important keywords are at the beginning of the URL, and keep all URLs as short as possible. Shorter URLs are easy for people to understand at a glance, and make it much easier for them to share. Always use hyphens instead of underscores since hyphens are “guaranteed” to be treated as spaces (which are bad), whereas underscores are not. Never use spaces in URLs, they will be converted to % and having % in a URL isn’t very friendly. It’s also generally advisable to strip file extensions from the end of your URLs, but is not an SEO necessity.

      Good SEO-friendly URL:
      http://mysoftware.com/windows-disk-cloning-free-software

      Not-so-good URLs for SEO:
      http://mysoftware.com/viewpage.php?p=2526982
      http://mysoftware.com/software/downloads/Mysoftware-Super-Disk-Cloner
      http://mysoftware.com/software/downloads/mysoftware_super_disk_cloner.aspx

Images and alt text

Using appropriate file names and alt text for images is an often overlooked way to optimize your site and has the potential to drive more traffic from image-based searches. The key is to make sure the file names of your images and the alt text include your target keywords. The title tag (which is shown when hovering over an image) is another place to use your relevant, targeted keywords. SEOMoz recently published a great write-up on the importance of optimizing your images for SEO.

      Good:
      http://mysoftware.com/windows-disk-backup-cloning-free-software.jpg

      Not-so good:
      http://mysoftware.com/softwarelogo.jpg

      Idea:
      Release your images under a Creative Commons license. Say a software blogger is
      searching for an image for a post about Windows backup software. By naming your
      image with your targeted keywords, the blogger may discover your software and if
      it’s good, he or she may include you in their article.

Meta descriptions

Meta descriptions don’t carry any weight as far as rankings go, but they serve an important function – they can help drive increased click-throughs to your site. On a SERP, you’re presented with a page title as well as a snippet of what the page is about – this is *usually* the meta description. A well-written, original and catchy meta description — no longer than 150-160 characters (the maximum length shown for a search result) — which contains your relevant and targeted keywords along with a strong call to action (see example below) can make the difference between someone clicking on your site or someone else’s – as long as the search engine chooses to use the meta description, which is not always the case. Sometimes, copy in the body of the content is used; sometimes it’s a combination of body copy and the meta description.

      Good:
      Get our free Windows backup software now and prevent data loss. Quickly and easily
      clone your hard drive. Download today — save headaches tomorrow!

      Bad:
      Myfreesoft offers Windows programs that help you maintain your Windows system.
      We offer free software you can download today.

Meta keywords

Stuffing keywords into the meta keywords field was a common tactic back in the AltaVista days. Those days are long gone and so is “keyword stuffing” as an “SEO technique”. Some argue that you should still use meta keywords, while others strongly argue against it. The decision is yours, but if you do use meta keywords, make sure they correspond to the actual content on the page you’re using them on.

      Good:
      <meta name=”keywords” content=”backup, windows, clone, hard drive, free, download”>

      Bad (drastic example but you get the idea):
      <meta name=”keywords” content=”backup, windows, clone, hard drive, free, download,
      coffee, hotels, airlines, cars, celebrities”>

Dynamic sitemap

A sitemap (usually an XML file in the root directory of your site called sitemap.xml) lists all the pages on your site you want crawled and includes information such as the date the page was last modified. If you’ve followed the guidance provided thus far, search engines should be able to easily crawl and index your site — with no additional work on your part. However, using an automatically generated sitemap is easy to implement in most content management systems and ensures that content which is not directly linked to from within your site will still be crawled and indexed.

      Note: To exclude certain pages or directories for being crawled, you use a file called
      robots.txt. Learn more about using the robots.txt file to exclude specific files or directories
      from being crawled. Be aware that there are “aggressive” spiders that ignore robots.txt,
      which means you’ll need to employ real security measures and access restrictions if
      you really need to keep certain files from being crawled.

Learning more about SEO

If you follow the above guidance, it will help you boost your search engine rankings and hopefully drive additional traffic to your site. Although making your site content, architecture and URLs SEO-friendly is extremely important; by itself, it is not enough for you to rank highly for competitive terms. In order to do that, you need a large amount of quality (authoritative) inbound links to your site. We’ll cover “off-page” SEO tips for building links to your site (backlinks) in another article. Luckily for software developers, it’s a bit easier to get some authorative backlinks by distributing your software through download sites or portals.

For more resources to help you familiarize yourself with the basics of SEO, Google has a great starter guide that covers some of the key things you need to understand about search engine optimization. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, also publishes great, short and extremely timely videos on YouTube about SEO (and other topics) which help dispel myths and will get you going on the right path.

In the meantime, there are a slew of great resources online for learning about SEO (besides the vast amount that Google offers). Here’s a short list of some great, trustworthy ones to help you get started and up your SEO knowledge.

• SEOMoz (they also have a huge list of SEO resources)
• Google Web Master Central
• Search Engine Land
• Search Engine Watch
• SEO Book
• Alltop SEO – aggregator of the top SEO resources
• Marketing Pilgrim
• YouTube Google Web Master Central Channel
• W3Schools

Until next time, definitely download a full-sized PDF or image of Search Engine Land’s recently released “Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors for an outstanding infographic representing what (currently) matters when it comes to SEO (both on and off-page).

Thanks for reading!

-The OpenCandy Team

Published August 12, 2011

The first rule of Twitter is that there are no rules. There are, however, some guidelines and best practices that you can use to get the most out of using Twitter to help promote your software and connect with your users.

That’s the key thing to remember: connections. Although essentially a “broadcast” platform, success on Twitter (like any form of social media) relies on meaningful engagement with others. If you use Twitter like a megaphone, you’ll miss the opportunity to create worthwhile relationships with your end-users. Here are 19 tips to help you get your “tweet on” successfully.

DO:

• Add a “follow us” button on your website to make it easy for people to follow you; Twitter has a button generator here.
• Keep an eye out for people who have recently followed you and follow back selectively. (Twitter sends email notifications of new followers by default.)
• Retweet followers who post interesting questions or testimonials about your product’s new features. Retweet relevant/interesting things even if it has nothing to do with your software.
• Reward your followers with access to beta programs.
• Remind users about special promotions.
• Leave enough room in your tweets so it’s easy for others to retweet you. Good rule of thumb: Max length of tweet = number of characters in your username + six characters (one character for @ and five for “RT: “) subtracted from 140 (max characters in a tweet). Best case is to leave as much room as possible.
• Pick as short a username as possible (hopefully it’s memorable too). Going along with the tip above, long usernames will make it more difficult to say what you want *and* be easily retweetable.
• Use relevant hashtags (e.g. #freeware when tweeting about your free software) where appropriate to make your content more visible to others.
• Follow select leaders in your area of the software/technology space.
• Use a URL shortener like bitly to save characters and track clicks (bitly also supports using a custom “short” domain that you own instead of bitly).
• Use lists to “follow” people without having their tweets show up in your timeline. You can create public or private lists for a variety of reasons; for example you could use a public list to add end-users who love your software.
• Let people know when new versions of your software are released.
• Inform people where they can go for support-related questions by leaving a note and link in your Twitter bio (i.e. For support -> link).

DON’T:

• Establish Twitter as a customer service platform. Your followers don’t want their feed inundated with your support answers. See the last tip above in “Do” or create a separate Twitter account for support only.
• Promise new releases and then miss the date. You’ll establish a trail of negative tweets from disappointed end-users.
• Use the Twitter account for your products for posting personal tweets. You may alienate or upset your followers. Note, this doesn’t mean not to be *personable*. ;)
• Air grievances on Twitter.
• Announce new features too far in advance. People have limited attention spans and will get tired of waiting for them. Their expectations may become higher than you can deliver.
• Let third-party Twitter apps/services spam your feed with things like “I have 542 followers”. Whenever you authorize an app to access your Twitter account, double-check the details.

That wraps it up for now. There are tons of third-party tools and services to help you do just about anything (get analytics, find people to follow, etc) with your Twitter account. We’ll cover some of our favorites in another post. For now, take a look at oneforty which has a great directory of third-party Twitter apps/tools along with descriptions and user-submitted ratings.

Tweet well and let us know *your* favorite Twitter tips in the comments.

By:
Alastair and Dr. Apps

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Alastair, Dr. Apps, OpenCandy or SweetLabs has received compensation from the makers of any software/services mentioned for the creation or posting of this content.

Published July 28, 2011

There are apps for fun and apps for work. And sometimes there’s marvelous apps that help you do work and have fun at the same time. While the majority of the SweetLabs team gets to build and support our awesome products in sunny San Diego, a portion of the team, like me, resides in other places. Us “remoters”, as I like to call teleworkers, rely on a bunch of technology to keep in contact and collaborate with the “home” team.

The beauty of the connected world we live in is the ability for instantaneous, real-time collaboration with anyone, anywhere in a few clicks (presuming there’s decent internet access). From start-ups, micro-ISVs to large companies, the cost of conducting business has dropped steeply over the last ten years, enabling any ad-hoc group to form instantly (especially developers), get in sync, and get things done.

Skype

Not “Skype” as in Facebook’s “awesome” new feature released a couple of weeks ago. The Skype that I’ve been using with my SweetLabs colleagues for the last few years is the one you go to Skype.com and download and install in a few clicks. I use Skype every single day to have both audio and video meetings, chat and more. Skype is fast, works across multiple platforms (desktop and mobile), and the sound quality is often much better than I get over conference call services I’ve tried and definitely better AT&T’s cellular calls (for me anyway). You can subscribe to Skype Premium (I do – special offers here) and enjoy video chats with up to 10 people as well as enjoy unlimited calling to the US & Canada. Skype also has a vibrant (albeit sometimes forgotten) third-party app ecosystem to extends its functionality (like apps for recording video calls which are useful for podcasting). The latest versions of Skype also include Facebook chat capabilities if that’s your cup of tea.

Bonus: When you need to instantly & quickly share a file with someone you’re “Skyping” with; simply drag the file into the chat window and bam! The person can save the file with a click.

Dropbox

Yes, it’s impossible to remember life before Dropbox (or one of its many competitors). But here’s what I remember… it was a not-so-fun and definitely less productive era. With Dropbox you can sync (i.e. BACKUP) your folders and files across multiple devices and also selectively share certain folders/files with specific people. You can even share a file via a link to the Dropbox website where someone without Dropbox (for shame!) can download the file. The ease at which Dropbox does what it does (from download to install to use) makes it *feel* unremarkable — and that’s the most beautiful thing true killer apps have going for them. If you have data that must be kept encrypted and you want to use Dropbox, check out SecretSync or BoxCryptor. Be sure to check out the Dropbox forums as they’re a great place to find ways to extend Dropbox’s functionality in all sorts of interesting ways. Dropbox is free up to 2GB, after that they have a Pro 50GB plan for $9.99 a month (which I subscribe to) and a Pro 100GB plan for $19.99 a month.

Bonus: There’s another tasty nugget on the Dropbox forums… regularly released nightly builds. You can try out features that *may* make it into the next release of Dropbox – if enough people like it. For example, the nightly builds had “selective sync” (great way to save space on laptops) before the release version.

Join.me

Sometimes you need to share your screen with someone. Sure, you could use Skype’s screensharing feature to do it, but it doesn’t afford the speed or quality of Join.me. Join.me is the brainchild of LogMeIn (arguably my favorite product of all time), designed to give anyone a painless way to initiate remote screensharing by downloading a tiny app. Best of all, the free version of join.me has just a nice set of features that should serve most people including the ability for 250 people to view your screen (great for impromptu or premeditated mass-screencasts). There’s also a viewer for iPad/iPhone and Android in case you need to tap into a screencast on the go. The pro version adds a slew of features usually reserved for “more traditional” remote conferencing services for only $29 a month.

Bonus: If you and your participant(s) have multiple monitors try using Skype video conferencing on one screen and Join.me to screenshare the other screen. You’ll have a much better experience — great audio/video quality via Skype and faster and smoother screensharing via Join.me versus using Skype by itself.

MindMeister

When you need to map anything, an article, a product, a software marketing plan or well, *anything* that requires brainstorming; the web-based MindMeister is a dead-simple way to get some collaborative brain-dumping done. The interface is sleek and not riddled with 40,000 features you’ll never use, instead it just showcases the necessities. The free version of MindMeister allows you to create up to three maps (not many, but it’s free) that you can share with up an unlimited number of collaborators. MindMeister also has mobile access via iPhone and iPad.

Bonus: If you only need to do collaborative mindmapping once in a while, you could stick with the free version of MindMeister and export your MindMeister map and then delete the online version. That way you’ll be able to create another map. I’m not saying to abuse the service by doing this, if you do a lot of mapping and like MindMeister’s service, step up to a paid account.

Google+

There I said it: Google+! Google+ is off to a fast start (even though it’s still invite-only) and has a certain feature that is really awesome for remote workers, that killer feature is… HANGOUTS! Google+ Hangouts allow video conferencing with up to ten people. The coolest part of hangouts is that the “focus” (the person who’s shown on your screen) is the person who is currently speaking… And though I haven’t experienced a screaming match firsthand to see what happens, the person who speaks loudest will get the “focus”, much like real life (although you can mute someone’s mic if they annoy you). With Hangouts you can bring together people you work with for business meetings and (especially cool for remoters) you could get to know your colleagues after-hours on a person level.

Bonus: What? Google+ Hangouts isn’t cool enough? Okay, well check out Business Insider’s list of “9 Creative Uses for Google+ Hangouts You Didn’t Think Of”, if you’re not sold yet… you will be.

Next time I head out to San Diego, I’ll post about the tools I use to keep in contact with home base aka The Lab. Until then, let me know what tools and apps you’re using to work remotely with someone else or a whole team. PS, if you still need a Google+ invite, shout it out in the comments as well and I’ll try and get you hooked up! :)

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for SweetLabs

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps, OpenCandy or SweetLabs has received compensation from the makers of any software mentioned for the creation or posting of this content.

Published June 25, 2011

This past Sunday was Father’s Day and it got me thinking about apps I’ve enjoyed using with my daughter and which ones I think you’ll enjoy with your kids as well. My daughter’s only two and a half and I’m amazed at how quickly she picked up using gadgets and software. These days kids just seem to have technology know-how baked into their noggins from birth. The type of apps my wife and I let her use are those which we think will help her be creative or learn something, and have some fun at the same time (obviously).

Name: LEGO Digital Designer
Developer: LEGO
Platform: Windows and Mac OS X
Website: http://ldd.lego.com/default.aspx
Ages: ? (I’m guessing 5-6 and up)
Cost: Free

Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t want to custom-design their own LEGO set and have it shipped to their door? I don’t think so (feel free to prove me wrong in the comments) and thankfully, LEGO delivers a great piece of software to do just that. As with everything LEGO, there are an infinite number of things you can build with this program. LEGO has also done a great job providing an online manual and tons of videos to help you have the best experience designing your crazy LEGO creations.

When you’ve finished building your masterpiece simply click the “Check price” button to see how much it’s going to cost you to have to get a set containing the LEGOs you need to build the sucker in real life! My daughter is still a bit too young to start designing her own LEGO sets but she helped me along by saying, “Use that one!” I never did finish our homage to her mother, but maybe I’ll have it done in time for Mother’s Day next year. Anyone who said dreams don’t come true is wrong, LEGO Digital Designer proves it!

Bonus: You also get to custom-design the box your creation comes in and LEGO provides instructions on how to build your set!

Name: Little Voice Commander
Developer: Mouser of Donation Coder
Platform: Windows XP/Vista/7
Website: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/littlevoicecommander/
Ages: Toddler
Cost: Donationware (About donationware)

You know how kids *love* clicking the keys on your keyboard (usually at the most inopportune time)? Now there’s a perfect app to turn those key presses into something useful! Little Voice Commander lets kids type a letter and see (royalty-free) images associated with that letter on screen as well as hear a voiceover of a word that begins with the letter they pressed. Press the letter ‘D’ and see some cute dogs shows up on-screen and hear the word ‘dog’ read aloud. Little Voice Commander also lets you speak into a microphone and it’ll try to recognize the word and show associated images.

My daughter had a blast with this app! She couldn’t stop and laughing and “aww’ing” at the pics (when animals were shown) and saying, “Daddy, that’s so cute!” Thanks to Ryan Smyth of Renegade Minds for introducing me to this sweet app. (Not only did he provide the voiceovers for it — he’s also co-hosting a new weekly podcast (coming soon) with me!)

Bonus: You can add your own photos and speech files making this program a great learning tool you’ll be able to get use out of for a long time.

Name: Tux Paint*
Developer: John Popplewell and Bill Kendrick
Platform: Windows/Mac OS X/Linux
Website: http://www.tuxpaint.org/
Ages: 3 to 12
Cost: Free

Tux Paint is a paint/art program for little kids that’s been around for a long time (2002). I’ve been recommending it to parents for much longer than my daughter has been alive and they’ve always said how much fun their children had using it so I couldn’t wait to try it with my daughter.

Tux Paint features the usual paint program functionality such as lines, shapes, text, eraser and undo and redo buttons but presents them via buttons on the left and right side of the “canvas” instead of with floating toolbars with tiny icons. The buttons in Tux Paint are large enough that they easy enough for those new to mousing around to select. My daughter (and I suspect a lot of younger kids these days) are more familiar with touch-based interfaces like iOS or Android, than keyboard and mouse-based OSes like Windows (at least until Windows 8…), so I had her point to what she wanted and guided her hand along the way. When we mucked around for this mini-review, she created quite a motif of little grey kitties running around an ostrich (see the screenshot above).

Bonus: Don’t forget to download and install the Tux Paint Stamps set too. It adds a ton of different stamps (animals, clothes, food, natural forces, plants, space, sports, vehicles, etc) to Tux Paint.

Name: Peekaboo Barn
Platform: iOS
Developer: Night & Day Studios
Website: http://www.nightanddaystudios.com/app/peekaboo-barn/
Age range: Toddlers
Cost: $1.99 (they also have a free “lite” version I haven’t tried)

This app is simple yet enduring. Its basic premise is to provide a really cute way for kids to learn animals and animal sounds. When the app starts you hear the familiar tune of “Old McDonald” and you’re presented with a little red barn on a meadow. The barn bounces up and down as it plays the sound of an animal. It also plays a “knocking” sound to alert your child to press down on the barn so the doors can open up and show you which animal makes that sound as well as hear the name of the animal spoken aloud. When you’ve finished cycling through all the animals, nighttime comes and the barn opens to show them all nestled together sleeping.

My daughter absolutely loves this app. She’s learned all the animals it features, so now we just say “What animal makes that sound?” before she touches the barn for confirmation of her answer. If your child is anything like my daughter, the $1.99 spent on this app will provide a ton of enjoyment and some educational value as well!

Bonus: You can choose whether you want the name of the animal spoken in English or Spanish by an “adult” or “child”.

I hope you have a great time with your children (or nieces, nephews, etc.) trying out these out! Please share your favorite kid-friendly apps in the comments. :)

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps nor OpenCandy has received compensation from the makers of any software mentioned for the creation or posting of this content.

* Tux Paint became an OpenCandy Software Network partner on 6/19/2011. OpenCandy (as well as the developers of Tux Paint) make money when a software recommendation is accepted during the installation of Tux Paint’s OpenCandy-enabled Windows installer.)

Installer Platform Comparison:
Making the right choice

As a software developer, you’ve invested time and resources into creating a product that your end users are going to love. Now you want to focus on spreading the word, building your user base, and developing new features that drive your product closer to its goals. But before presenting your product to the world, you also need an installer that looks modern and professional, fully-featured and easy to use. It has to support a wide range of OS versions, be easy to maintain, flexible and extensible for the future, and all of this without a large up-front investment so you can get back to doing what you do best – building great products.

Working with hundreds of partners, we’ve developed years of experience in installer platforms, their implementations, benefits, and limitations. In this guide, we introduce you to two of the most popular platforms on the OpenCandy network today and show you how you can get up and running in almost no time using well-supported, off-the-shelf products that can support your business now and into tomorrow.

Contents

Installer Platform Comparison: Making the right choice
   Why use an installer platform?
   An introduction to NSIS and Inno Setup
   Preparing a demo
      Getting started with NSIS
      Getting started with Inno Setup
      Summary
   But wait, there’s more!

Why use an installer platform?

Capable developers may be tempted to build their own installer solution. After all, the features required of a basic setup program appear trivial at first glance: Show dialog boxes, extract files, create shortcuts, and offer to start the installed software. Unfortunately, the requirements of even a simple setup program are considerably more complex under the surface.

A widely distributed installer must run well:

• across multiple versions of Windows and service pack levels
• on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems
• with a variety of system and installer languages
• where file and folder paths may not be in expected locations
• where user account types and UAC may affect the installation process
• where system restarts may be required
• … and in a variety of other circumstances

The work required simply to develop and test an installer against all target environments, let alone testing the product itself, is daunting. Installer platforms help to relieve this burden by abstracting from the technicalities underpinning common installation actions.

Publishers are also increasingly demanding of their product installers, seeking to:

• display customized installation screens
• produce multilingual installers
• download files, check for updates, or hit reporting URLs
• seamlessly extract and run plug-ins during installation
• compress the installer to reduce download time
• monetize their distribution

Developing all of these features independently can be a costly and time-consuming task. Fortunately, modern installer platforms tend to cater to each of these needs. Typically a platform will provide one or more UI themes that can be customized to feature distinctive branding elements with little effort, support for fully customized wizard dialogs, and extensibility through a scripting language and/or plug-in system. Frequently, where a platform doesn’t natively implement a popularly requested feature, user communities step in to provide script snippets, libraries and plug-ins that are leveraged from just a few lines of code. As a publisher, you can benefit from the ongoing development, maintenance and support from active platform communities.

An introduction to NSIS and Inno Setup

Two of the most prevalent installer platforms found on the OpenCandy network are the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS), and Inno Setup. Both are script-driven systems that are very capable out-of-the-box with active user communities providing script libraries, plug-ins, development support, and even entire IDEs. Their open-source nature and well designed script and plug-in architectures have allowed them to grow alongside the demands of their user base.

NSIS takes a procedural approach to script programming that will be familiar to many developers. Beyond the basic statements that customize the core properties of the installer package such as its name or compressor type, an NSIS script defines function-like “Sections” representing individual components of an installation that can be turned on and off under various circumstances. Each section performs a series of scripted actions as required to install the component it represents, such as extracting files, writing registry keys, or calling other NSIS functions and plug-ins. Likewise, uninstaller properties and uninstall sections can exist within the script and are called upon if the script indicates an uninstaller is also to be generated. NSIS script actions are written one per line, and most complex actions are simplified by a sizeable collection of script libraries included in the standard distribution. NSIS employs a wizard installer UI, and the popular ModernUI library is just one of many customizable wizard UIs for NSIS installers that providing a selection of pre-built installation screens that can be inserted and customized within minutes. Plug-ins available for NSIS add support for calling procedures in DLLs, custom dialogs, http downloads, and more. NSIS’s procedural nature lends itself well to handling complex installation tasks, but sometimes sacrifices some of the abstraction a declarative platform provides.

Inno Setup provides a declarative form of installation management. Developers specify where files should go at install time, which registry keys should be set or updated, which installation types particular items belong to, and so forth. Armed with this information, Inno Setup can automatically generate both an installer and uninstaller that work reliably across all supported versions of Windows. Inno Setup uses a wizard UI, automatically displaying relevant screens based on the installation items declared. Unwanted screens are easily disabled. Third-party extensions like ISSkin also make it easy to apply a theme to the UI, and custom dialogs can be created using the built-in Pascal Scripting engine. The script engine provides a basic procedural language that can be used to extend Inno Setup installers. It allows conditional logic applied to installation item declarations to be extended, the UI to be modified and custom dialogs created via an event model, and it makes it possible to extract, load and call procedures in DLLs directly, vastly extending Inno Setup’s potential. Extensions like InnoTools Downloader leverage DLLs to provide support for http downloads, and more. Inno Setup’s declarative nature allows rapid preparation of straightforward installers that take the guesswork out of product deployment.

	NSIS	Inno Setup
Homepage	http://nsis.sourceforge.net/	http://www.jrsoftware.org/
Open-source	Yes	Yes
License fee	Free	Free
Installation script style	Procedural	Declarative
Installer compression	Yes - Deflate, BZip2, LZMA	Yes - Deflate, BZip2, LZMA/LZMA2
Customizable UI	Yes - Built-in dialog properties are customizable, can load custom resource binaries, various UI libraries, has event callbacks, can send window messages, custom dialogs via InstallOptions (included) and nsDialogs (included) plug-ins.	Yes - Built-in dialog properties are customizable, has event callbacks, custom dialogs via script, theme support via ISSkin (http://isskin.codejock.com/)
Multilingual	Yes, including RTL	Yes, including RTL
Included language support	58 languages	20 languages
Unicode support	Via Unicode NSIS (http://www.scratchpaper.com/)	Yes
HTTP download support	Yes, via NSISdl plug-in (included)	Yes, via InnoTools Downloader extension (http://www.sherlocksoftware.org/)
Uninstaller generation	Yes, manually scripted	Yes, automatically generated
IDE	Various third party	Native, various third party
Custom scripting language	NSIS	Pascal script
Native plug-in system	Yes	No
DLL support	Extensive, using System plug-in (included). • Calling conventions: stdcall (Win32 API) and cdecl. • String types: ANSI, Unicode (UTF-16LE/Win32 API). • Supports keeping DLLs loaded between calls.	Extensive, built-in. • Calling conventions: stdcall (Win32 API), cdecl, Pascal and register. • String types: ANSI, Unicode (UTF-16LE/Win32 API). • Supports keeping DLLs loaded between calls.
Dedicated OpenCandy SDK	Yes, includes fully integrated sample installer script and integration guide.	Yes, includes fully integrated sample installer script and integration guide.
Pros	• In-depth control of every installation action • Vast collection of helper libraries and plug-ins	• Fool-proof installations • Automatic uninstaller generation
Cons	• Manual debugging • NSIS variables and stack operations are easy to mismanage	• Fewer contributed UI choices

Preparing a demo

It’s possible to prepare a sample installer using both Inno Setup and NSIS in a matter of minutes. Follow our short tutorials to set up your development environment and compile a basic installer package. Our goal will be to:

• Present a modern, attractive user interface
• Set one or two branding elements
• Show Welcome, EULA, Installation Location, Installing, and Complete screens
• Produce a compressed installer binary
• Include an uninstaller

You will need to prepare, in a new folder:

• An executable file to be installed (our sample code expects “Notepad.exe”)
• A “License.txt” file

You will also need a good plain-text editor. We suggest Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/), which supports syntax highlighting for both Inno Setup and NSIS scripts.

Getting started with NSIS

Follow these steps to create our demo installer using NSIS:

1. Download and install NSIS (http://nsis.sourceforge.net/)
2. In your previously prepared folder, create a new plain text file with an .nsi extension, for example “myinstaller.nsi”
3. At the top of the .nsi file add some useful definitions for the sample product:

# A few handy definitions to avoid repetition
!define COMPANY_NAME "My Company"
!define PRODUCT_NAME "My Product"
!define PRODUCT_VERSION 2.0
!define UNINSTALL_KEY "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\${COMPANY_NAME} ${PRODUCT_NAME}"

4. Set some basic installer properties. The NSIS help file describes these in the “Installer Attributes” section.

# Set the installer name and compilation properties
OutFile "${PRODUCT_NAME} ${PRODUCT_VERSION} NSIS Installer.exe"
RequestExecutionLevel admin

# Set some basic installer properties
Name "${PRODUCT_NAME}"
BrandingText "Copyright ${COMPANY_NAME} 2011"

# Set the default installation location
InstallDir "$PROGRAMFILES\${COMPANY_NAME}\${PRODUCT_NAME}"

# Remember the installation directory for future updates and the uninstaller
InstallDirRegKey HKLM "Software\${COMPANY_NAME}\${PRODUCT_NAME}" "InstallDir"

5. Include the ModernUI 2 library, add and customize pages for the installer and uninstaller. These macros and customizations are described in the ModernUI2 documentation page.

# Include the ModernUI 2 library to make everything look nice
!include "MUI2.nsh"

# Installer pages
# We use definitions described in the ModernUI 2 documentation to customize the UI
!define MUI_WELCOMEPAGE_TITLE "This is my custom welcome message!"
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_WELCOME
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_LICENSE "License.txt"
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_DIRECTORY
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_INSTFILES
!define MUI_FINISHPAGE_RUN "Notepad.exe"
!define MUI_FINISHPAGE_RUN_TEXT "Launch ${PRODUCT_NAME} now!"
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_FINISH

# Uninstaller pages
!insertmacro MUI_UNPAGE_CONFIRM
!insertmacro MUI_UNPAGE_INSTFILES
!insertmacro MUI_UNPAGE_FINISH

# Make sure the appropriate ModernUI language strings are included
!insertmacro MUI_LANGUAGE "English"

6. Add a section to install our product and write an uninstaller. The NSIS help file describes in detail how sections are used, and the scripting reference describes each of the instructions below.

# This section is run during install
Section "${PRODUCT_NAME} ${PRODUCT_VERSION}"
	Push $OUTDIR ; Store previous output directory
	SetOutPath "$INSTDIR" ; Set output directory

	# Write the program file and make a Start menu shortcut
	File Notepad.exe 
	CreateShortCut "$SMPROGRAMS\${COMPANY_NAME}\${PRODUCT_NAME}.lnk" "$OUTDIR\Notepad.exe"

	# Create an uninstaller and add it to the Add an Add/Remove programs list
	WriteUninstaller Uninstall.exe
	WriteRegStr HKLM "${UNINSTALL_KEY}" DisplayName "${COMPANY_NAME} ${PRODUCT_NAME}"
	WriteRegStr HKLM "${UNINSTALL_KEY}" DisplayIcon '"$OUTDIR\Uninstall.exe"'
	WriteRegStr HKLM "${UNINSTALL_KEY}" UninstallString '"$OUTDIR\Uninstall.exe"'
	
	Pop $OUTDIR ; Restore the original output directory
SectionEnd

7. Add an uninstall section to remove our product and cleanup the uninstaller

# This "un."-prefixed section is run during uninstall
Section "un.${PRODUCT_NAME} ${PRODUCT_VERSION}"
	# Remove the program and Start menu shortcut
	Delete /REBOOTOK "$INSTDIR\Notepad.exe"
	Delete /REBOOTOK "$SMPROGRAMS\${COMPANY_NAME}\${PRODUCT_NAME}.lnk"
	RMDir /REBOOTOK "$SMPROGRAMS\${COMPANY_NAME}"
	
	# Remove the uninstaller and Add/Remove programs information
	Delete /REBOOTOK "$INSTDIR\Uninstall.exe"
	DeleteRegKey HKLM "${UNINSTALL_KEY}"
	
	# Remove the installation directory if empty
	RMDir /REBOOTOK "$INSTDIR"
SectionEnd

8. Save the .nsi file, right-click on it, and choose Compile NSIS Script
9. Test the sample installer and uninstaller (from Add/Remove programs)

Using NSIS, we’ve created a fully functional installer and uninstaller run on all versions of Windows in only 74 lines, less than half of which involved any custom code.

Getting started with Inno Setup

Follow these steps to create our demo installer using Inno Setup:

1. Download and install the Inno Setup QuickStart Pack (ispack), unicode edition (http://www.jrsoftware.org/).
   
   Note: If you don’t download the QuickStart Pack you will not get the Inno Setup Preprocessor Pack that is required for this demo and Inno Setup will issue warnings when you try to compile the installer script.
2. In your previously prepared folder, create a new plain text file with an .iss extension, for example “myinstaller.iss”
3. At the top of the .iss file add some useful definitions for the sample product:

; A few handy definitions to avoid repetition
#define COMPANY_NAME 'My Company'
#define PRODUCT_NAME 'My Product'
#define PRODUCT_VERSION '2.0'

4. Set core installer properties. The Inno Setup help file describes these in the Setup section.

[Setup]
; Set the installer name and core properties
AppName=My Product
AppVersion={#PRODUCT_VERSION}
DefaultDirName={pf}\{#COMPANY_NAME}\{#PRODUCT_NAME}
DefaultGroupName={#COMPANY_NAME}
DisableProgramGroupPage=yes
UninstallDisplayIcon={app}\Notepad.exe
LicenseFile=License.txt
Compression=lzma2
SolidCompression=yes
OutputDir=.
OutputBaseFilename={#PRODUCT_NAME} {#PRODUCT_VERSION} Inno Setup Installer.exe

5. Declare the items to be installed. The Inno Setup help file includes separate entries covering the Files, Run, and Icons sections.

[Files]
; Tell Inno Setup which files to install and where to put them
Source: "Notepad.exe"; DestDir: "{app}"

[Run]
; Offer to launch our product at the end of the installation
Filename: "{app}\Notepad.exe"; Flags: postinstall; Description: "Launch {#PRODUCT_NAME} now!"

[Icons]
;Add a start menu shortcut
Name: "{group}\My Program"; Filename: "{app}\Notepad.exe"

6. Customize the UI message, as we did for the NSIS demo. The Inno Setup help file describes the Messages section.

[Messages]
; Customize a UI message
WelcomeLabel1=This is my custom welcome message!

7. Save the .iss file. If you are editing using Inno Setup Compiler press Ctrl+F9 to compile the script. Otherwise right-click on the file and choose Compile.
8. Test the sample installer and uninstaller (from Add/Remove programs)

Using Inno Setup, we’ve created a fully functional installer and uninstaller that will run on all versions of Windows in only 34 lines. In this particular instance, the code is shorter than that of the NSIS installer because the declarative description of the installation has allowed Inno Setup to automatically generate all of the uninstaller code. Inno Setup also shows its built-in wizard pages where appropriate, allowing you to disable them if required, as opposed to NSIS which requires you to insert the pages you want.

Summary

We introduced two installer platforms, NSIS and Inno Setup, each of which is prevalent on the OpenCandy network. Both platforms are powerful and extensible, supporting the demands of publishers including branded, modern UIs, custom dialogs, multilingual interfaces, http download support, compressed installers, and uninstall support. We demonstrated that using an installer platform allows rapid development of a setup package with professional look and feel that can be reliably deployed across multiple versions of Windows without the headache a custom-built installer program would entail, leaving developers to focus their efforts on building better products, growing their user base, and achieving their goals.

But wait, there’s more!

OpenCandy was founded to support developers by helping them monetize their distribution and reach new users, and to help consumers discover great software products. We provide easy to use SDKs for NSIS and Inno Setup that let you earn income simply by selecting great software to recommend to your users. Visit us at http://www.opencandy.com/ and learn more about the OpenCandy Software Network SDK.

One of the most-asked questions in on the internet has to be, “How do I download “X” from “Y’s” site?” People are always wondering how to download videos from YouTube, schedule downloads, or download certain file types into specific folders on their computer. Internet Download Manager (IDM) helps you do all that and more.

Unlike many of the apps I recommend, IDM isn’t free. The $29.95 I paid in 2007 (same price today) was well worth it, and I’ve received dozens of upgrades and updates since. IDM is a small download (4MBs or so) and installs quickly, though it *may* require you to restart Windows before you can use it. Once installed, it automatically takes over downloads from your browser(s) and you can set it to ask you to download files from *any* application that tries to fetch a file from the internet. If you have problems downloading a file with IDM (a rare occurrence) you can temporarily disable IDM from taking over downloads.

Internet Download Manager's User Interface

The Need for Speed

Did I mention the best thing about download managers? They speed up downloading by opening multiple concurrent connections to the server you’re downloading from. In IDM’s case, it can open up to 16 simultaneous connections for *each* file its downloading. I would never suggest doing that though as it violates good netiquette — so stick with four connections and be a good netizen.

If bulk downloading from a specific page is what you want, simply right-click on any webpage and click “Download all links with IDM” which brings up a dialog box that lists off *all* the files (html and otherwise) on that page so you can select which files you want. You can even set IDM to download specific file types to certain folders if you’re a file organization nut. Want to download Youtube videos? Piece of cake, fire up the video on Youtube (or Google Videos, Break.com, DailyMotion and more) and a little IDM button appears right above the vid. Click it and it’ll show a few different size files (depending on the number of available resolutions of that video). Choose the video size you want and boom! The video is saved to your videos folder.

Internet Download Manager - Youtube Download Button

There is one thing I dislike about IDM. It creates an entry in the registry for every file it downloads. In my case, that means thousands and thousands of useless entries are created which bloat the size of my Windows’ registry. I periodically clean them out, but I’ve been kicking around the idea of paying someone to create a miniature app (email me if you’re interested) which will automatically and intelligently do it for me.

Internet Download Manager Created Registry Entries

It’s Like Wolverine!?!

The best reason to try IDM is its speed and stability. It’s a mature, polished product that has continually gotten better over the 4+ years I’ve used it. I know some people will never pay for a download manager, and that’s okay because there are plenty of options out there. Check out IDM’s list of features, install the 30-day trial and see what you think. If it’s not your cup of tea, you can try Free Download Manager, Download Accelerator Plus, MiPony (an OpenCandy partner) for sites like RapidShare, or browser-specific extensions like DownThemAll for Firefox. I’ve tried them all and they’re great, but I find IDM is the best, most reliable download manager around. It’s the Wolverine of downloading.

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps nor OpenCandy has received compensation from the makers of Internet Download Manager for the creation or posting of this content.)

The only thing I love more than great apps is a tool that offers a simple way to organize and launch great apps. So I was naturally excited when Windows 7 introduced a new feature that allowed you to “pin” your favorite applications (and websites) to the Taskbar, figuring my need for third-party app launchers would become a thing of the past. Very quickly, however, I encountered a new problem with the pin-to-the-taskbar feature; I enthusiastically pinned a bunch of apps to the Taskbar, and I very quickly ran out of space. I was forced to result to scrolling through my Taskbar to find the apps I wanted. I don’t know about you, but to me scrolling through the Windows Taskbar is akin to trying to get through AT&T’s customer service voice prompts – annoying, to say the least.

1-Up Your (Windows) Life

That’s where Bins comes in. Bins was created by famed Windows enhancer Jeff Bargmann, whose work includes StarDocks’ Fences and ObjectDock as well as the Dell Dock which comes preinstalled on many Dell machines. His latest venture is a company called 1-UP Industries, which is dedicated to making Windows enhancements that make your daily routines less painful and more productive.

Pin It and Bin It

If you’re familiar with iOS 4′s ability to group applications into folders, then you’ll quickly understand how Bins works. Currently in beta and available for free (it will cost money upon its release), Bins allows you to group Taskbar icon’s together simply by dragging one Taskbar icon onto another and “dropping” it into a pop-up menu. You can categorize your launched and pinned apps to your heart’s content by creating as many “bins” as you’d like (though eventually you’d probably have to start scrolling through the Taskbar again, something we’re trying to avoid here).

Once you’ve created your Taskbar groups, it’s a simple matter of hovering your mouse over a group’s main icon (you can pick which icon is the “main” icon for the group) and the rest of the group’s icons slide out a slick little box. One of the nice things about Bins is that your favorite features like live thumbnails and Aero Peek still function properly.

A Bin for Your Toolbox

Bins is as handy an app for people with giant screens as for those using laptops with smaller screens or netbooks. With Bins installed you can move the taskbar to the side of the screen and get more vertical space while keeping all your favorite apps a hover and click away. Give Bins a try today and by the time the final version is out, you can decide whether it’s worth keeping in your desktop enhancement toolbox. It’s definitely staying in mine.

Shout out to my co-worker Barrett for tipping me off to Bins! :)

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps nor OpenCandy has received compensation from the makers of Bins for the creation or posting of this content.)

Downloading… It’s Like a First Date

Since getting the most completed downloads possible is a crucial step in the “courting ritual” software providers engage in with consumers, digitally signing installers is becoming more and more important. The problem is that many open source or “mom and pop” developers need to spend every penny they earn carefully, and buying a digital certificate is yet another expense (to the tune of $75+ a year). In addition, depending on legal structure, getting a certificate can be a frustrating experience trying to provide the necessary information to a certificate authority in order to establish your identity to successfully get one issued. It’s worth the trouble though as not having a digitally signed installer means users of Internet Explorer 9 may get a warning that your software installer is malicious — and that’s where the “courting ritual” will end.

(False positive) Warning in IE9 for an unsigned, yet legitimate and fairly well-known piece of software

Panacea or Part of the Solution?

Digital signing is not and never has been a security panacea – it’s one piece of the security pie. Crafty criminals can produce the necessary documentation (faked, of course) to obtain certificates, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Whether you like it or not, digital signing is here to stay. For consumers, knowing the integrity of a file is intact and getting some idea of the legitimacy of the author behind it is great. For small software developers, yes, it’s another expense, but a necessary one in the race to get your application successfully in the hands of app-hungry consumers. On the OpenCandy Software Network we digitally sign our client so there’s one less hurdle to delivering successful recommendations of our advertising partners’ software, and as a best practice, we recommend all of our partners (developers and advertisers) do it too.

For more reading on digital signing, check out a post by Eric Lawrence, Product Manager on Internet Explorer and author of the notable Fiddler Web Debugger application, called “Everything you need to know about Authenticode Code Signing”.

So go “get signed” and let us know in the comments how you feel about the topic.

Happy development and downloading to all of you! :)

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy

UPDATE (5/23/2011 3:44PM EST): Computerworld has an article called “Security researcher slams Microsoft over IE9 malware blocking stats” which highlights the problems with statistics like these, as Sophos research Chet Wisniewski comments, “They put lots of numbers to make it seem all ‘sciencey,’ but they raise more questions than they answer. So really, where’s the beef?”

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps nor OpenCandy has received compensation from any party listed in this article for the creation or posting of this content.)

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoomar/341608045/sizes/l/

This list of resources isn’t specific to any particular version of Windows. Instead, the goal is to highlight resources that can help you have a better experience with any Windows version. I’ve had the pleasure of using each of these resources since they first staked their claim online; in one case, I’ve been an avid reader of the site for well over ten years! Without further ado, here are four resources that will help you fix almost any problem that rears its blue-screen-of-death-head. Enjoy!

Houston, we have a (Windows) problem!

The Resource: EventID.net

The Lowdown: When troubleshooting an issue with Windows, don’t skip over your log files (available from going to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management or Event Viewer). Windows’ built-in logging captures errors it encounters and assigns a number to each uniquely identifiable event, which are called event IDs. If you’ve ever searched for information on an event ID, you’ve probably seen EventID.net show up in your search results. The often overlooked site contains information for over 10,000 event IDs and has over 17,000 comments about them. The best part is that the site doesn’t limit itself to event ids thrown by just Windows or other Microsoft products; it has information on a ton of event ids thrown by third-party apps as well.

Verdict: Essentially a search engine for Windows errors, EventID.net offers a minimalist interface that helps you locate the information you need quickly.

Bonus: The site has subscriptions available, offering enhanced resources to help your troubleshooting quest, including one-click access to user comments and other online resources.

Just the patch, ma’am!

The Resource: The Hotfix Share

The Lowdown: Every day Microsoft publishes updates (called hotfixes) that resolve issues affecting users of its many products. When a hotfix solves an issue specific to a small subset of configurations or a limited number of people, that hotfix doesn’t get the “full Microsoft treatment” – meaning it isn’t easy to get the patch you need. In these cases, you’ll have to jump through hoops by filling out a form, emailing, or even calling Microsoft to request the hotfix.

Enter Hotfix Share to the rescue. When you don’t have the time or inclination to weed through Microsoft’s maze, The Hotfix Share is the place to go. The site allows anyone who has received one of those “not so easy to get” patches or hotfixes to upload them for everyone. Once uploaded, the hotfixes are verified by the site’s administrators for legitimacy (by checking the MD5s against information Microsoft published) and are posted with the pertinent details. The best part is that it only takes a few clicks to download each hotfix – no hoop-jumping required! The site features hotfixes for multiple Microsoft products like Windows, Office, Exchange Server, .NET, Visual Studio and more.

Verdict: Saving time, especially if your system is misbehaving, is a godsend. The Hotfix Share is a gem of a timesaver.

Bonus: Another draw of The Hotfix Share is the message boards, where people discuss their Windows issues and whether or not a certain fix worked for them. It’s worth noting that this is a small site run by donations. I’m sure they use a decent amount of bandwidth, so if you download some hotfixes that resolve your issue, consider making a donation.

But, but… It’s a hardware issue, Jim!

The Resource: Anandtech.com

The Lowdown: Back in the early days of the Internet (1997) there was one (okay that’s probably a *slight* exaggeration) computer hardware site around, which was run by a then fourteen-year-old brainiac named Anand Lai Shimpi. That (aptly-named) site is Anandtech. Today, Anandtech is still one of the best sites on the net for hardware news and analysis. Possibly the best thing about the site is that you can learn a great deal about how technology works – and how to make it work for you – by way of the plain-English style of writing that Anand and his posse are known for. Anandtech’s next greatest asset (besides Anand and his team) is its awesome community of die-hard hardware aficionados who are ready, willing and able to solve just able any hardware problem in the Anandtech forums.

Verdict: Anandtech is the crème de la crème of hardware sites. Their hardware analysis is unparalleled and the community of knowledgeable folks willing to help is the icing on the cake.

Bonus: Not only can you get individualized help by posting your specific issue or question, but there are alos a ton of people who post combinations of hardware and configurations that work well for them. They’ve essentioally created a one-stop shop to find hardware combination that really work great together!

We need more info, captain!

The Resource: Windows Weekly

The Lowdown: Trying to sum up Windows Weekly in one paragraph will never do it justice. One of the earliest podcasts started by netcasting magnate Leo Laporte, Windows Weekly has pumped out over 200 episodes featuring all things Windows, Microsoft, and much more. The show, co-hosted by renowned tech journalist Paul Thurrott dishes the latest news from Redmond, along with thoughtful analysis of important happenings in the tech world. In addition to news, the show offers picks, tips and tricks that’ll help you not only have a better Windows experience but a better experience with the variety of technology we all use on a daily basis.

Verdict: An indispensable weekly journey through the world of Microsoft and other technology behemoths which features great tips, tricks and software picks along the way. A must-listen.

Bonus: All of the TWiT network shows have a wiki page for each episode, including Windows Weekly. Even if you can’t listen or forget to (shame on you! ;) ), you can fire up the TWiT wiki and find all of Paul’s tips, tricks and software picks with download links. Don’t forget to check out Paul’s “home” on the internet, WinSuperSite.com for the latest information and in-depth articles on Microsoft, Windows and other important topics in the tech world.

There you have it. If you were looking for ways to bring your Windows system back to health, or just looking for ways to prevent problems so it runs smoothly, I hope this post helps you on your journey.

Be well and happy computing! =D

Dr. Apps — Follow me on Twitter!
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps nor OpenCandy has received compensation from any resource listed in this article for the creation or posting of this content.)

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/465513277/

A few weeks ago, on February 12, the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) classified OpenCandy’s software as “Low (threat level) Adware.” This prompted Microsoft security products (such as Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender) to alert consumers downloading any of the hundreds of high-quality, trusted applications that use OpenCandy to make software recommendations in their installers.

We believe we have identified the cause of this misunderstanding and taken action to resolve it, so it should not affect any new OpenCandy software distribution going forward. However, there still remains an issue that Microsoft is falsely alerting potentially hundreds of millions of consumers (who have downloaded or are downloading, previous versions of OpenCandy software).

The journey
I’d like to explain the journey we had to undertake to get to this point as well as the potential damage an unfair and unduly burdensome process can inflict on individual developers and consumers.

When we first discovered that Microsoft was flagging OpenCandy, we understood immediately that it was a Big Deal. We created this company to empower Windows app developers to safely, securely and efficiently distribute and monetize their software in a way that is not only not intrusive to consumers but in fact provides real value and choice. As Windows developers and consumers ourselves, we live in a space littered by bad actors that lacks the transparency, choice, and privacy that developers and consumers deserve. We wanted to change that.

And so far, we think we’ve done a pretty good job of making that vision a reality, powering hundreds of millions of software downloads a year without compromising the values of developers or infringing on the rights of users. So, when Microsoft, the company that created and maintains the Windows platform that makes our business possible, the company that also happens to be one of our largest and most supportive partners, flags an OpenCandy application as potential adware, we take it extremely seriously. We have created innumerable safeguards and processes to ensure that our network abides by the standards and regulations related to consumer rights and security, and it seemed inconceivable to us that something could have slipped through in violation of those procedures.

We quickly acted to address the issue through the channels available to us, contacting the MMPC in hopes of clearing up a false positive or else receiving specific, actionable information in the event that we, or one of our partners, had mistakenly violated one of MMPC’s guidelines.

Here’s where the story gets ludicrous. What we have experienced in the last few weeks attempting to simply extract information from Microsoft can only be described as a maze of dead-ends and non-responses that would infuriate even the bureacratiest of bureaucrats. Suffice it to say that to this day, a full three weeks after the initial flagging, we still have not been told what *specifically* triggered the classification nor have we been advised how to prevent it in the future. To call this frustrating would be a massive understatement.

Despite the lack of clarity or direction from the MMPC, our team worked day and night to decode the nuances of the policies and procedures we were presented with and in time isolated what we believe to be the source of the issue. Namely, one individual OpenCandy partner (out of hundreds) appears to have been mistakenly missing an End User License Agreement (EULA) in their installer. This means that any consumer installing this specific partner’s software did not agree to OpenCandy’s transmission and collection of anonymous information (used for purposes of making a software recommendation).

Ok, a mistake. A mistake on the part of our partner and a mistake by us for not having the right process in place to catch that the EULA had been removed after it had passed our compliance process. The partner has since added their EULA.

So, why would a missing EULA cause such a ruckus? We asked MMPC and ourselves the same, and we believe it may be linked to one of our software features that enables us to place and access an OpenCandy specific “cookie” (unique, non-personally identifiable registry entry) on a consumer’s machine. In reality, we’ve never used this “cookie” feature but the intent behind building it in was to lower the chances that a recommendation previously declined would be shown again. We believe that MMPC was concerned with the possibility of utilizing a cookie that may have been placed without consent during the install of that specific partner’s software that was missing a EULA.

While we still disagree with MMPC’s classification, in the interests of our partners and consumers, we decided to remove this unused “cookie” feature altogether in the latest version of our software plug-in. MMPC has approved this version and our partners are now rolling this out in their software updates.

So, problem solved? Well, not exactly. Microsoft security products continue to alert consumers that have downloaded and installed OpenCandy partner software in the past as well as consumers that download and install software that includes previous versions of the OpenCandy plug-in, even if they never encountered the software that was missing a EULA. Based on the information MMPC *has* provided us, we believe this is resulting in potentially hundreds of millions of consumers receiving false threat warnings associated with our software.

We feel that it is irresponsible for Microsoft to willfully flag potentially hundreds of millions of installers that don’t match the threat classification. With the authority and power of being an anti-malware provider comes responsibility to correctly flag only software that matches the classification.

We’re a small company, with limited resources, trying to build a business that we believe offers real value to developers and consumers. A single action by a giant like Microsoft has the potential to significantly affect our ability to realize our vision, which is why we acted quickly and swiftly to address the issue. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s inability or unwillingness to simply offer some clarity as to how we can fix a problem that we don’t even fully understand is, frankly, mind-blowing. We continue to value the Windows platform and Microsoft themselves as a key partner, but all we’re looking for is clear, actionable information. And we can’t seem to get it.

The upshot of all this is: all OpenCandy partner software that has been updated to include our latest plug-in should no longer be flagged by Microsoft security products. And a handful of other anti-virus/malware providers who also flagged OpenCandy quickly reversed their position to a false positive, without any of this drama.

In the meantime, rest assured that all OpenCandy partner products comply with our extensive privacy and security regulations, regardless of whatever legacy warning may pop up. We’re proud of the decisions we’ve made, and we’re not going to let a morass of big-company red-tape slow down our progress. I apologize to all partners and consumers who have been affected by this issue.

And for those who might be interested in seeing a comprehensive breakdown of the information we transmit and collect you can check it out here.

Please feel free to email me directly at darrius at opencandy dot com.

Darrius Thompson, CEO OpenCandy

This Brain Food article is part of a series on software marketing for developers. Follow our easy-to-digest guide to improve the visibility and distribution of your software and grow your user base.

In this series:

   Part 1 – Make your site convert
   Part 2 – Distribute your download (this page)
   Part 3 – On-page SEO for Software Developers

Preface

When it comes to software marketing, one of the benefits of developing a great application that end users love is that you won’t be the only person promoting it. There are a ton of download sites that have made it their business to provide your application to their users if it meets their listing criteria. Publishing your application on a well-trafficked download site can also alleviate some heavy-lifting in garnering the top slots in search engine results for your product or target keywords. Let’s go over getting your software listed.

Publishing your software on download sites

Depending upon the existing reach of your software and the resources you have to spend managing listings, there are a variety of approaches you can take toward getting your software listed.

The shotgun method

There is a wide selection of automated submission tools to choose from that can help you submit your software to hundreds of download sites automatically. Robosoft is one such a frequently updated tool that can submit your software to 1,000+ download sites, taking care of account creation and even some CAPTCHA’s automatically. While in the long run it is worth having your software listed on many download sites, your submission methodology may depend on how much you’re willing to spend and how much time you have to manage your listings. For example, it costs $99 USD to use Robosoft’s service, but when you next release an update for your product you won’t have to spend a lot of time tracking and updating all of your listings manually. It is worthwhile updating your listings after significant updates that affect the product version number because this can boosts visibility by raising your software to the top of “What’s new” lists – just don’t be abusive with your updates or you might find yourself out of favor with site administrators.

Smaller publishers will likely find the investment in good automated services and tools worthwhile to boost awareness of their product. Larger publishers may find that focusing their attention on manually optimizing listings on larger sites is a better investment for them.

The DIY approach

For a more targeted approach to listing your software, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most reputable and influential download sites. Cumulatively, these sites drive a significant portion of all software downloads and getting your software listed can introduce a substantial number of new users to your software that wouldn’t discover it otherwise.

• Download.com — http://upload.cnet.com/
• Snapfiles — http://www.snapfiles.com/submit/
• Majorgeeks — http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=198114
• Softpedia — http://www.softpedia.com/user/submit.shtml
• BetaNews/FileForum — http://fileforum.betanews.com/addprogram
• Brothersoft — http://author.brothersoft.com/
• Softonic — https://www.softonicads.com/
• Tucows — https://author.tucows.com/
• Simtel — http://www.simtel.net/account.logon.php?SiteID=simtel.net
• Download32 — http://www.download32.com/submit.html
• Downloadatoz — http://www.downloadatoz.com/submit/
• Soft32 — http://www.soft32.com/sw.html

Get your PAD on!

Regardless of the exact submission method you choose, most will require that you submit a portable application description (PAD) file along with your software. PAD files use a standard data format to store all of the typical information about your product download sites require to complete a listing, and allow some sites to fill form fields or entire listings automatically. While PAD files can be created by hand, the easiest way to make one is using a PAD generator, such as PADGen, a downloadable app, or PADBuilder, a free online service.

Send the right message

Whether you are working with PAD files, filling in forms manually, or using automated submission tools, always put extra care into writing the description of your software. A carefully crafted and engaging write up can lead to a marked increase in downloads, and in long-term users who better understand the value proposition of your product. When describing your software:

• Include keywords that a person might search for when hunting for a solution to the problem that your software solves.
• Keep your description concise. You may have a lot of information to share, but most visitors don’t spend a lot of time reading.
• Focus on communicating the most important benefits of your product. Sometimes it is better to write about the problems the product solves rather than the features it has.
• Write for the general audience of the download site(s) you are listing on. Assuming visitors have the same technical knowledge as you can deter people from trying your software versus competing products that appear easier to use.

Build your reputation

As part of your overall software marketing strategy you want to have your application listed on as many reputable sites as possible. Do your research and never list your software on sites that carry malware or engage in any other questionable practices. Curating your brand from an early stage is an important step toward building a good reputation, the trust of your user base, and increasing both your distribution and search rank.

-The OpenCandy Team

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

This Brain Food article is part of a series on software marketing for developers. Follow our easy-to-digest guide to improve the visibility and distribution of your software and grow your user base.

In this series:

   Part 1 – Make your site convert (this page)
   Part 2 – Distribute your download
   Part 3 – On-page SEO for Software Developers

Preface

So you’ve built a great piece of software and now you’re looking for ways to improve your distribution. In today’s crowded software market it can take effort and creativity to get your software noticed by the right people and into the hands of eager consumers.

In the first part of our series on software marketing best practices we focus on the most valuable asset at your disposal for creating the right impression and converting visitors into users: your home page.

Design a homepage that converts

As a software developer, when someone visits your site, you want to:

1. Make a good impression, and
2. Get them to download your software

1. Making a good impression

It’s likely that you have a variety of goals for your website, including educating visitors about your products, providing contact points, support information, and even community building. Too often, the urge to communicate a wide range of site features and product benefits leads to a home page that overwhelms visitors seeking a straightforward solution. Your website is often the first impression a visitor will have of your product, and to make a positive impression you should ensure your design looks professional and your messaging is engaging, concise and easy to understand.

Use these tips when considering your layout:

• Spend time planning your site architecture.
  • Carefully consider your site navigation and the level of information exposed in each area of your website.
  • Don’t nest pages too deeply or present an overwhelming volume of information on any one page.
  • Give navigation links titles using terms visitors will look for to find the destination pages.
• Keep your homepage clean
  • Remember that your homepage must be relevant to a broad audience.
  • Concisely present the most important messaging points for your product.
  • In a featured location state what your product does or the problem it solves.
  • Carefully consider which buttons or navigation elements to include so visitors have clear, obvious choices to make at a glance.

If you are not particularly well versed in web design or copy writing it may well be worth your while to hire a web designer to help you create an clean, aesthetic site, or at the very least customize a WordPress theme.

When it comes to writing copy, you have two options: hire a writer or write the copy yourself. Either way, your site’s copy should contain a concise and accurate description of what your product does using plain language that everyone can understand. Avoid using industry jargon or localized slang and, in a simple and direct way, describe the problem your software solves and how it does so. Your homepage is the most important page on your site. Keep it simple and uncluttered and allow visitors who just want to download your software an easy and direct way to do so. You can include greater detail about your product, but do it on separate pages – and continue to make sure to write simply and clearly.

It can be tempting as a developer to write using technical language, but unless your software is exclusively targeted at developers, it is better to write in more accessible and easily understood language. Developers often tend to overestimate the technical background of their websites audience. One method that can help you hone in on your “pitch” is the “tweet method”: try putting together descriptions of your software’s value proposition in 140 characters or less. This can be a powerful way to develop a compelling statement on what makes your software something that people need to have.

Finally, make sure to include a screenshot of your software on your website. Many users want to see what the product looks like before downloading it. A good screenshot can in many cases be just as powerful as a list of features, communicating at a glance what the product does and how easy it is to use. You may even want to create a nice gallery of screenshots or take it to the next level and create a video.

2. Get people to download your software

When a visitor arrives at your website it’s likely that they will see a variety of options you’ve created in anticipation of their possible goals. However, the primary goal of your site should be to help users engage with your software. From this perspective, a critical metric for any developers’ website is how frequently visitors convert into downloads. Following these guidelines will help you design a site that converts well:

• Include a large and obvious download button above the fold on your homepage. The Mozilla Firefox website is a good example of a well-designed download site with a prominent download button.
  • Our experience shows green and blue tend to be the best performing colors for download buttons as they are both eye-catching and soft on the eye. With that said, you may improve conversion significantly by testing different colors and button designs to see what works best for your audience and website.
  • Include the phrase “Free Download” on or near your download button
    • Other similar terms such as “Download Now” can boost download rates as well. Experiment with different specific language to see what works best for your product.
  • Keep excess clutter and text away from the area surrounding the download button so the user won’t be distracted and downloading your software will be the prominent call to action on the page

The biggest problem with many software homepages is that they try to educate the user first and drive downloads second. The majority of visitors don’t spend much time reading, and if someone is on your homepage, there is a good chance that they are ready to download your software, so make it easy for them. Include additional information in less prominent areas—such as below the fold or on separate pages, so visitors who want more detailed information can still access it.

A/B and multivariate testing

To take your site design to the next level you can conduct A/B and multivariate tests to determine which of several site designs performs best. A/B testing refers to altering a single element on a web page and testing which of the two variations performs the best. This supports data driven design decisions that move your site closer your conversion goals. A/B tests can be conducted relatively quickly, easily and for free using Google Website Optimizer. Try testing the design of your download button, the value proposition messaging for your software and the color scheme for your website.

For more information about A/B testing, check out Smashing Magazine’s comprehensive guide.

What’s next?

Now that you’ve got some pointers for optimizing conversion on your own site, learn how to Distribute your download in part 2 of our series.

We hope you enjoyed this post and are hungry for more! :)

– The OpenCandy Team

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Doesn’t Get Any Easier
CCEnhancer is a minuscule 350KB download and is a cinch to use. Once downloaded, simply launch CCEnhancer with admin privileges and press “Download latest” to fetch an up-to-date file containing the list of additional third-party apps and the location of their “unnecessary” files which CCEnhancer then adds to CCleaner’s configuration. Once that’s finished (after about 10-20 seconds), you can launch CCleaner and check out all the new apps that were added by looking at the ‘Applications’ tab under the ‘Cleaner’ section of CCleaner. There you can choose what application’s files you want to remove.

Detailed Results Are Your Friend
As with any cleanup tool, it’s important to make sure you know exactly what will be removed from your computer before it’s actually deleted. CCleaner has a handy ‘Analyze’ feature that is quite useful when you have the ‘Show initial results in detailed view’ setting enabled. When you analyze your system with the option turned on, you’ll see a detailed list of every single file CCleaner’s wants to remove. If you find something listed that you don’t want removed, you can add it to CCleaner’s exclusion list and then re-analyze to make sure it’s no longer slated for removal there.

A Note of Caution
Even the best cleanup programs make mistakes, as witnessed by Bill Pytlovany creator, developer and owner of WinPatrol. In a recent update to CCleaner (through no fault of CCEnhancer’s), he noticed (and also remarked about being careful with cleanup programs) that Piriform added the detection and removal of a file critical to the proper operation of WinPatrol. The issue was quickly resolved, but it’s a potent reminder to always keep your eye on any cleanup or optimization tools you use to make sure they don’t mistakenly remove something you don’t want them to.

I’ve also noticed people commenting that they were wary of trying CCEnhancer because they didn’t know what programs it adds to CCleaner’s detections. The Web Atom maintains the list (and the locations of files) at the following address so you can check it out before using CCEnhancer: http://content.thewebatom.net/files/winapp2.ini.

Give CCleaner and CCEnhancer a shot and get your act (well your computer at least) cleaned up a bit, will ya? Just make sure you know what you’re deleting. :)

This is Dr. Apps signing off for now. As always, be sure to follow me on Twitter.

App info
Software: CCEnhancer
Version used: 2.2 Beta (12/07/2010)
Compatibility: All versions of CCleaner (32 and 64-bit)
Installer size: 350KB
License: Freeware
Language(s): English
Homepage: http://thewebatom.net/software/ccenhancer/download/

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr.Apps nor OpenCandy has received compensation from the creator(s) of CCleaner or CCEnhancer for the creation or posting of this content.)

We were lucky enough to be able to sponsor the “Most Promising Open Source Project” award category, where pimcore emerged as the overall winner and was awarded $2,500. TomatoCMS and BuddyPress were the first and second runners up and were awarded $1,000 and $500 in prize money respectively. Our earnest congratulations go out to them and to the two other finalists, Wolf CMS and LiveStreet CMS. In the coming weeks, I’ll be conducting a video interview with Dietmar Rietsch, the founder of pimcore (and whoever else from the team he wants to bring along), so be on the lookout for it.

Congratulations to all the other projects that were nominated too. It’s exciting to see so many great open source projects gain recognition for all the hard work they put into providing awesome software to the world at large. The awards wouldn’t be possible without all the people who make up the communities and support the projects, so thanks to everyone who took the time to vote as well.

It’s been a pleasure working with Packt on the awards and we look forward to doing it again in 2011. Be sure to check out the full list of winners on Packt’s site.

Viva la open source! :)

Dr. Apps
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy
Follow me on Twitter

Dr. Apps: Since this category is for projects less than two years old, how does it feel to be recognized by the community as one of the most promising open source projects?

John: Pretty awesome! BuddyPress has come a long way, and we have a ton of neat things in store for its future.

D: How do you feel about BuddyPress being a finalist for Most Promising Open Source Project?

J: I’ve always felt very proud and fortunate to be part of the BuddyPress community and development team, so it was a lot more of that same warm and fuzziness. Recognition of a job well done always feels good.

D: For people that don’t know about BuddyPress, can you briefly explain what it is?

J: BuddyPress is a plugin for WordPress that enables features you’ve come to expect from a typical social network: Friends, Groups, Activity, Private Messages, Forums, and Profiles. It’s purpose is to more easily enable a WordPress powered site to be more of a niche network for users that are passionate about what that WordPress site provides already.

D: How many people are on the core BuddyPress dev team?

J: Five, total. The project was started by our other lead developer, Andy Peatling. We brought Marshall Sorenson on for his interest in further developing the internal APIs. Most recently we added Boone B. Gorges and Paul Gibbs to the team as they’ve been two of the most active and dedicated contributors of patches and bug fixes for a long while.

D: What are some of your favorite programs, tools, or libraries that helped with developing BuddyPress?

J: Aside from WordPress? :) For me personally, I bounce around quite a bit between operating systems, and Netbeans is the only consistent interface that I’ve found for Windows, Ubuntu, and OSX that offers SVN integration and XDebug support. XDebug is a huge help, and literally changed the way I write and test PHP overnight, so for me it’s a must have. For spot fixes I use Notepad++ and TextMate. Firebug is essential for anything user facing.

D: What one feature of BuddyPress is the team most proud of? I know it’s hard to pick sometimes. :)

J: It’s probably a tie between the Activity Stream and the Groups API. Both have some pretty killer code behind them, and are really powerful components that have lots of room to grow and extend.

D: What does being a finalist in the Most Promising Open Source Project category mean to BuddyPress?

J: I think it means that people care about the power of running their own social network and owning their own data. Being a finalist means people really care about the project, and the time and effort that goes into it. We are super excited and humbled to see it be recognized this early on in development.

D: What differentiates BuddyPress from the other finalists for “Most Promising Open Source Project”?

J: That’s really hard to say. I think all of the finalists deserve to win, and we’re all doing our best to fill a specific gap. Our development style and approach might be the only thing I would think could differentiate. Since we’re all working remotely and in a few different countries, we’ve mirrored the WordPress development mantra pretty closely.

D: What is the vision for the future of BuddyPress? Where do you want to go from here?

J: More documentation, easier APIs, tighter integration with WordPress UI,… and we’ve been discussing ways to connect independent BuddyPress installations together for a while now.

D: What would winning prize money do for the project? Basically what will you spend the money on if you win?

J: That’s a good question. We’ve talked about 3D televisions and vacations for the dev team, but ultimately we decided donating it to the WordPress foundation was the best investment in the projects future.

D: Is there anything else you’d like to tell people about BuddyPress?

J: BuddyPress is a rapidly growing open source project, and one of the few that are genuinely focused on helping build social networks. If you’re a developer that’s looking for something new to try, or someone looking for something a little more than a blog or a forum without needing to give up control of your data, we really hope you’ll check it out!

Huge thanks to all of our supporters from Andy, John, Marshall, Boone, and Paul!

D: Thanks for the interview, John! I know we had a bit of trouble getting it done due to illness on both sides. Best of luck to you and the BuddyPress team in the finals. Which reminds me — there are only FOUR more days left to cast your vote for Most Promising Open Source Project and the other four categories in the 2010 Packt Publishing Open Source Awards!

Dr. Apps
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy
Follow me on Twitter

Dr. Apps: Since this award category is for projects less than two years old, how does it feel to be recognized by the community as one of the most promising open source projects?

Dietmar: Amazing, simply amazing. Since pimcore is not even a full year old, it’s an even greater privilege for us, being recognized as one of the most promising open source projects. All of this would not have been possible without the great support and enthusiasm of our community. Thanks to everyone who voted for pimcore.

Dr: For people that don’t know about pimcore, can you briefly explain what it is?

Di: Basically, pimcore is a powerful and robust Zend Framework-based PHP content management system for creating and managing digital content and assets. With pimcore we have intentionally chosen a different approach than most other content management systems and frameworks. Pimcore clearly focuses on the enterprise and agency market and provides features that are fairly new in the open source CMS market and, until now, primarily available only from big, commercial CMS vendors.

These features include multi-channel publishing (web & print), product information management, master data management and APIs and SOAP web services for automating the whole system.

Dr: How many people are on the core pimcore dev team?

Di: The core team of pimcore is made up of 4 people. Bernhard is the head of code and works together with Michaela and Christian on all core aspects of pimcore. I’m guiding the project and care about the management and the communication issues. Additionally Betty, Albert and Karl work on plugins, documentation issues and the community.

Dr: What are some of your favorite programs, tools, or libraries that helped with developing pimcore?

Di: Technologically, pimcore is strictly based on the Zend Framework, the leading development framework for the PHP programming language. pimcore’s frontend GUI interface is 100% powered by the renowned ExtJS Javascript library. Therefore our thankful shouts go out to Zend and the Zend Framework community and to the Sencha team for creating ExtJS.

We have also obtained great support from different software vendors, supporting our open-source approach. Atlassian provided us with a free license for their issue and release management products and the smart guys from Jet Brains sponsored a few licenses for their great PHP Storm IDE. Thanks to all of them.

Dr: What one feature of pimcore is the team most proud of? I know it’s hard to pick sometimes. :)

Di: Yeah, that’s a real hard one. First of all, we are proud of the whole package. As you probably know, code and especially features can be – although not human – very jealous beings. Therefore I have to be quite careful. < whispering> I like the drag-and-drop based model editor best. It just makes it very easy to create new apps and functionality within pimcore. It’s rad. RAD as in Rapid Application Development.

Dr: What does being a finalist in the Most Promising Open Source Project category mean to pimcore?

Di: The Packt Publishing award is a prestigious one. Being a finalist is a great honor for the whole pimcore crew and provides very positive publicity for our open-source solution. Actually it’s more about recognition and an important step for pimcore’s road to success.

Dr: What differentiates pimcore from the other finalists for “Most Promising Open Source Project”?

Di: First of all: Congratulations to all the other nominees. All of them are really great open-source solutions. pimcore has a clear focus on the enterprise and agency market and provides tools and solutions for creating enterprise-ready websites and web applications.

Content and assets provided by pimcore can be used in third-party ecommerce systems, in ERP systems, on mobile devices, in heterogeneous environments via web services and, of course, pimcore-managed websites and apps.

Dr: What is the vision for the future of pimcore? Where do you want to go from here?

Di: Nothing more than establishing an open-source enterprise content management ecosystem as a real alternative to the big closed-source players out there! ;-)

Dr: What would winning prize money do for the project? Basically, what will you spend the money on if you win?

Di: Winning this competition would really be something special – mostly for the recognition and the exposure for pimcore. In this regard, winning the prize money is really secondary for us. As Christmas is around the corner, we would split the prize money into equal parts: One part for charity and one part for planning the first annual pimcore conference.

In terms of charity, we would like to support Mediadonis and SEOs For Charity. They do a great job helping the truly disadvantaged and less fortunate.

Dr: Is there anything else you’d like to tell people about pimcore?

Di: Thanks to the whole pimcore community for your support and enthusiasm. If you are not yet in love with pimcore, learn more about it on our site. And if you have any questions, just use our forums and try out our award winning support. ;-) Cheers!

Dr: Thank you so much for your time and doing an interview with me, Deitmar. Best of luck in the finals! And, as a reminder for everyone who hasn’t cast their vote yet, final voting closes on November 5th, so don’t be late. There are four other award categories in the contest to vote for as well … so go get voting!

Dr. Apps
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy
Follow me on Twitter

Dr. Apps: Since this category is for projects that are less than two years old, how does it feel to be recognized by the community as one of the most promising open source projects?

Martijn: It feels very good of course! It shows we’re on the right track and people are noticing our project. With so many useful open source projects out there, there’s a strong sense of affirmation about what Wolf hopes to provide to users.

D: How do you personally feel about Wolf CMS being a finalist for Most Promising Open Source Project?

M: Great! It is very gratifying to see people’s response to Wolf CMS and see the community grow and help each other out.
It’s hard to keep up with all the new initiatives — we weren’t familiar with some of the other finalists, in fact! I’m sure we’re all pleased to be included in this showcase event.

D: For people that don’t know Wolf CMS or anything about the project, can you briefly explain what it is?

M: Wolf CMS is a content management system that aims to be simple but extremely powerful through its tool set and plugins. Rather than you having to create your site around the system, we want you to mold the system around your site.

D: How many people are on the core Wolf CMS dev team?

M: We currently have four people on board: Two developers and two documentation/forum guys. I’m the founder and lead developer and as such do most of the core work. Mike’s the second developer. He focuses on bug squashing, plugin development and when time’s left other core development. David is our resident evangelist, forum and documentation guy with Dejan also working on documentation.

We all try to pitch in at the forums when needed. Feel free to meet us at http://www.wolfcms.org/discover/the-team.html or in the Wolf CMS forums.

D: What are some of your favorite programs, tools, or libraries that helped with developing Wolf CMS?

M: The tools I use most are the NetBeans IDE, a local Ubuntu LAMP installation, Firefox 3 and PHPUnit for unit tests. Additionally I occasionally use Xdebug or Selenium when called for. We’re in the process of moving from Prototype to JQuery by popular request which is turning out to be more of a headache than expected. We have people in the core team and in the community helping out, but certain things just seem to be difficult to do. In any case we do quite like JQuery and once the migration is done, we should have clean sailing.

D: What one feature of Wolf is the team most proud of? I know it’s hard to pick sometimes. :)

M: That’s a hard question indeed, when there are so many to choose from! The simple page-based hierarchy makes the CMS instantly and intuitively understandable, even to brand new users lacking a technical background. The plugin and helper systems ensure that every developer can extend Wolf to their heart’s content. The simple use of HTML/CSS for templating means that there are no barriers to designers. And every user will be grateful for the many security initiatives that are being implemented in the current development phase. Though Wolf’s best feature might simply be its “keep-it-simple”, “less-is-more” approach.

D: What does being a finalist in the Most Promising Open Source Project category mean to Wolf CMS?

M: Exposure for a fledgling project, a pat on the shoulder for a job well done so far and an added incentive to keep going.

D: What differentiates Wolf CMS from the other finalists for “Most Promising Open Source Project”?

M: Wolf CMS aims to be a simple, free form CMS that allows developers a lot of flexibility in the way they develop their site. That’s our focus and that’s the difference. For example, where BuddyPress and LiveStreet seem to be focusing more on social network and blog sites, Wolf CMS is geared to start you off with a simple core so you can built anything you want from there. We’re trying to keep it as small and simple as possible while still allowing you to easily expand functionality through plugins and custom code. Also, some other finalists have opted to include a wider range of libraries and platforms than Wolf has. Our choice is based on keeping things simple and light, yet still powerful.

D: What is the vision for the future of Wolf CMS? Where do you want to go from here?

M: The vision for Wolf’s future is to keep it simple, slim it down and speed it up. Not only will slimming it down and speeding it up improve Wolf CMS itself, but it will also reduce power consumption which in these days is increasingly important.

We’d also like to expand our community, to foster new plugins by improving ease of development and to expand and improve documentation. A lot of projects underestimate its importance so we’d like to make sure we have good documentation. Despite being a relatively small and young project, we already have quite some resources and will be adding more.

D: What would winning prize money do for the project? Basically what will you spend the money on if you win?

M: The most obvious effect winning would have is it’d give us a lot of exposure.

Depending on the amount we’d win, we may also spend a small amount on a couple of thank you gifts towards certain people in the community that we feel have helped their fellow community members and Wolf CMS in general. Nothing fancy, just a small thank you from us to them.

D: Is there anything else you’d like to tell people about Wolf CMS?

M: Sure! We’d like to invite everyone to come on by at wolfcms.org, try it out and say hello on the forum. You’re always welcome!

D: I appreciate you spending the time to be interviewed and sharing Wolf’s story. I can “see” the passion for what you do and wish the best of luck to you in the finals. Voting for the Open Source Awards closes on November 5, 2010, so go and vote. There are also four other categories with great projects to vote for as well, so what are you waiting for?

Dr. Apps
Software Community Guru for OpenCandy
Follow me on Twitter