Forum Moderators: buckworks
It was built with Joomla 1.0 (Mambo 4.5 before) and people confirm their email address for CB. It will probably migrate to Drupal or something else in the near future.
Because of the registration I am able to email the ~5000 registered users to announce new features, bug fixes, etc. The registered users can also post to the forum. It's been especially helpful during beta programs. Nonetheless, these benefits may not be important to all the people who want to try the trial version - at least not until after they've tried it.
What are best practices in this field?
Would making the download page wide open increase the number of people trying the software? (I presume yes).
Would there be any disadvantages that I've forgotten about?
At the very least perhaps I should have a download module/plugin that will capture the event for analytics purposes. Perhaps it can also verify that they are a human and allow them to optionally add their email to a mailing list. (recommendations?)
Any thoughts?
dc
But users will look for a anti-spam/privacy policy statement.
Do they? Why would they believe it? How would they know where it was leaked from unless used once only?
Most of my emails are with my domains, but I used to have a few junk emails with my ISP. Found out right quick that my ISP sells or otherwise grants access to emails created though them. Created a junk email to have 'on tap', but did not use. Carpet-bombed with spam. Happened every time. Switched to just creating junk addresses on my own domains and then dumping every by-and-by.
People can easily download your software using disposable e-mail addresses if they don`t want to use their real address.
And they do. Of 5000 email addresses, 500 or more or not valid anymore. Not all because of throwaway addresses - some email accounts have just changed.
If you are not requiring the email to be opt-in - that is, they get an email from you that then allows them access to the download,
This is what I have required, but like I've said I don't really remember why. Since I haven't remembered any good reason, though, it sounds best to open it up.
If they do provide an email address, it probably is a good idea that they confirm it before they get any correspondence.
Related question - can Analytics track a binary download or does it need special scripting? Just knowing that a user goes to the page is not enough.
I will install Joomla and see what it offers right now.
Any pointers on this?
What I need is to have someone register after they click on a link to download a file, then have the file offered to them.
