phpBB

Ever since I started a phpBB forum for support, some bots (or humans?) post topics for drugs and x-rated content. Seems that most people owning and/or moderating a phpBB board know this phenomenon. I got about 2 messages a day and removed them manually. I tried to minimize it using the Visual Confirmation when a user wants to register (captcha, you know, the hard to read image that should keep bots from creating an account). But this didn't help much. "/AITOЯ" from the "Joel on Software" forums told me why:

"The trick the spammers use to bypass captcha codes is really clever:

- get the captcha image from the site to be spammed
- put it in a p0rn site so if a user wants to see whatever he has to enter the captcha code
- post that captcha code to the original site

It's like in The Matrix, they use humans for their profit, which actually don't know that are being used. :)"

It seems that phpBB is a victim of it's own success, and the primary target of spam bots. So I could do 2 things: guard my phpBB forum with mods and other addons or use a different forum software. I chose the second option and after some searching I found Simple Machines Forum (SMF). The forum software is easy to install. Even easier than phpBB, cause I don't have to change any file rights. Best of all, they have several conversion scripts which will put all your phpBB topics on the new SMF forum. It only took 1 hour to have the new forum software up and running including all the posts from the phpBB. I only hope that the spam bots have a harder time with SMF. Fingers crossed.

(Note: SMF does not pay me to say this, this is my own opinion).

Website design

The past few weeks, I've been thinking about our website. I think it's outdated and we could use a whole new design. Also, some content needs to be revised.

The problem is: I'm not that good at design in general. If you're not good at something you can either:

a) Pay someone else to do it
b) Invest time and learn how to do it yourself.

I used to create my own program icons for instance, until I got some sense and purchased an icon set. You just can't spend the time to learn how to create nice looking icons if you can purchase a whole set for a decent price. But what to do with the site? The cheapest site design starts at 1000 €. That's a lot of money for something 'you can do yourself'. And how do I know if the result will be good? I'd probably have to change things in the design myself afterwards.

So I checked what I'd need to create a new design myself and started calculating. I have an editor, and I don't need a new one yet. I need a good program to create nice graphics (can you believe I used MS Paint before?). Figuring I should go for the best, Adobe Photoshop is my first choice. I also want an easy tool to create buttons. I found several tools from other µISV, and selected one. I already purchased an icon set, and I can use it for the website too. This is all I need (I think).

Adobe Photoshop CS2 833,69 €
Button Creator tool 29 €
Total: 862,69 €

Cheaper than paying someone to do it for me. And I have control of everything in the design. Of course, it will take some of my time to create the whole site.

The main template is ready, so now I only have to redo all the pages with the new template. You can see a preview here. Note that the site can still change. I like how the new design looks like. It's certainly an improvement. Let me know if you like / dislike it.

Of course, I still have to release Watchdog - O - Matic 4.0 first, so it will take some time before the new website is ready.

Bits du Jour and Spam

Sales can be strange sometimes. At one point, you're nagging about how low the number of sales is and looking for a reason. The next thing you know, orders come rolling in and you have more than expected.

On top of that, we had our Bits du Jour promotion yesterday, which generated extra sales (14 orders, one for multiple licenses). I'm happy with that number. It's not like Service - O - Matic is intended for everyone. I think most Bits du Jour visitors are looking for a different kind of software. Anyway, I hope they are happy too and we can work together again sometime in the future.

Now for something different: spam. Everyone hates it, and I receive my share. But that's not my main concern. The biggest problem is the following situation. Customers sending me a mail with a problem they have. I reply as fast as I can to solve their problem. The day after, I receive another mail from them, asking if we are looking to solve the problem. So it seems the customer didn't receive our mail. Probably a spam filter on their end, but very annoying. So we send them the same mail again, asking them to confirm that they receive it. After a few hours, we send another mail and keep it as short as possible to avoid spam filters. No reply. This is so frustrating. We know one of our customers has a problem, and we have no way to reach them. We started our second forum to solve this (the first one was spam infested, so we took it down), but you can't just abandon mail support.

I can only hope people who don't receive any mails from us read this, and post their problems on the forum. If anyone knows a good way to solve this, please contact me.

Service - O - Matic sales

Service - O - Matic sales are a little slow this month. I sold about half the number I should have. I have no idea why. I paid $50 to have the software on TuCows and I started a promotion on snapfiles. The promotion on snapfiles is running for more than a week now, and resulted in 2 extra downloads. Not very spectacular. With my current sales/downloads rate, I shouldn't hope this advertisement will pay off.

I did release 2 new versions this month, each with new features. Each release brings the program back on top of most download sites. This results in more exposure / downloads and should eventually result in more sales. Is the program becoming to difficult to use at this price? I'm cheaper than all my competitors, but offered fewer features with previous versions. We offer the same amount of features now that the product is maturing. Maybe it would have been better to create a professional version and add all complicated features in that version. This would keep the basic software simple and cheap. We can still create a professional version in the future, but we'll have to select which new features should only go in which version without creating a disadvantage for regular users.

We should be on Bits du Jour this month (actually, this week), so that will probably increase the number of sales (although I guess the profit will be minimal due to the discount and affiliate fee).

It could also be a coincidence. Sales of Service - O - Matic have been very good in August and September, so maybe I'm just back to the normal level?

No longer registration codes

For the new Watchdog version (4.0 scheduled to release in November), we will remove the registration code and work with a trial and a full version after purchase. I believe this will increase sales for several reasons:

1) Instead of distributing a key, crackers need to distribute a crack which will be different for each release. And the cracked version will not be like the full version anyway. Making it a little harder to have a free full version will result in more sales.

2) Downloading a full version and installing it is less of a hassle than entering a registration code. I mean, the download is only 1.6 MB big (or it will be when we use the inno setup instead of the old Installshield). The download takes less than a minute and the setup won't be much longer. Do you know how many times I get a mail with customers having trouble with their reg key?

You think downloading 1.6 MB a second time is a hassle? Compare it this way: you have a CD with free software tools somewhere and you need one of those tools. Are you going to get out of your seat, search through hundreds of CDs to find the tool? Or are you simply going to download it again and install it?

I think this change will be for the better.