Tracking is a king in mISV business.
When somebody downloads a file from your website you must log the event. Therefore, you must invoke a script (e.g. download.php) on your server that will write the info about the event in a file or database and then will redirect the visitor to the actual binary file.
In the same time, using script as a download link is not practical because many software archives do not allow links to php/pl/cgi pages, only to the exe or zip.
To overcome this you may use .htaccess file for redirection.
If you use http://www.site.com/download/abcmaker.zip as a public download link then the sample string for .htaccess can be:
Redirect /download/abcmaker.zip http://www.site.com/download/download.php?product=abcmaker
and the download.php must contain something like:
<?
...
//logging info to file or db
...
header("Location: /download/abcmaker_1421.zip"); //link to real file
?>
As you see this approach allows also to change the actual file name on the server while all incoming links may still point to http://www.site.com/download/abcmaker.zip
Many novice (m)ISVs design websites for their products themselves. The home-made design allows the quick and low-cost getting started. However, if you have no experience in web design there are lots of non obvious peculiarities that you have to know to make your website attractive. One of the most important things is graphics. Look at your web site in different web browsers and check if your logos, screenshots and artwork are clear and glamour. The website images appearance depends on the image file formats. There are three standard formats for website images: JPEG, PNG, and GIF. You should use each format for different purposes.
Today I’d like to tell about the common mistake of freshmen designers - using inappropriate image format for their logo or screenshots. I met this situation many times. The simple demonstration bellow shows the specifics of using those three formats for logo picture.
Using JPEG format
Although JPEG offers good compression ratio and allows using high color palette, it affects the picture quality. The better compression means the lower quality. If your image consists of monochromatic areas with sharp bounds then using JPEG format will make your picture “dirty” and inaccurate. That’s why JPEG is often good for photos rather than for logos, screenshots and artwork.
If we’d use JPEG for the logo picture on our Dr.Explain website then it would look inaccurate.
Not good, right?
Using PNG format
PNG is a very useful format indeed. It offers high color palette support, good compression ratio, transparency and doesn’t affect the quality of the picture. PNG images look clean. The format is perfect for screenshots. Nevertheless there is an issue that sometimes makes PNG useless for web design. Web browsers may display PNG images in slightly altered gamma, especially if the picture uses transparent alpha channel. So, if you use PNG image in conjunction with other design elements its borders may be visible and the whole design will look like patchwork.
If we’d use PNG for our logo picture then its borders would be visible on the gradient background in some browsers.
This is not perfect also.
Using GIF format
Although GIF format supports only 256 color palette in most cases it’s enough to display your artwork without loosing the quality. Of course you must adjust the picture palette in image editor first to select the right colors. It’s better to use the same color table for all elements of your website design to make the it seamless and solid-drawn.
We do use GIF format for our logo to make the header graphics seamless.
It looks perfect, does it?
Conclusion … Please recall this post when you’re making a new design for your website. Choose appropriate image formats for different graphical elements… or hire a designer 
I bet you want to improve your website position in the search results on major search engines, primly on Google. Being seen in the organic search results is the good way to receive the stable targeted traffic almost for free. That’s why you have to continuously improve the Page Rank (PR) of your pages. Everyone knows that good PR “comes” through incoming links from other websites with high PR. In the same time, not everyone knows that external links on our websites steal our PR and pass it to those third party website.
To keep your website PR you should minimize the number of outgoing links, especially if you’re linking to sites with poor PR (many SEO experts believe that outgoing links to relevant websites with high PR positively affect your own PR). How this can be done:
Remove weak links
If there are unnecessary outgoing links on your website then simply remove them. Period.
Use rel=”nofollow” attribute within anchor tag
If you cannot delete an external link by some reasons then you may use “nofollow” attribute within A tag. The “nofollow” attribute that can be associated with links was originated as an idea by Google and pitched past MSN and Yahoo, as well as major blogging vendors, gaining support. When added to any link, it will serve as a flag that the link has not been explicitly approved by the site owner.
The link that looks like
<a href=”http://www.site.com/page.html” rel=”nofollow”>Cool Page</a>
won’t grab your PR and won’t improve PR of the linked page.
Convert external links into internal ones
Another approach is replacing direct links with redirects.
For instance, replace
<a href=”http://www.site.com/page.html”>Cool Page</a>
with
<a href=”/redirect.php?s=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.site.com%2Fpage.html”>Cool Page</a>
SEO gurus believe that search engine spiders can pass through 301 and 302 redirects. So, redirect.php script must be slightly tricky. Here is a simple example of redirect.php script:
<html><body>
<script language=”javascript”>
document.write(’<form id=”go” method=”get” action=”<?=$s?>” style=”display:none”></form>’);
function bl()
{ document.getElementById(’go’).submit(); }
bl();
</script>
</body></html>
This script will pass a real visitor through but will stop a crawler. Thus the search engine spider will count the link as internal one.
Revamp your website by using these simple techniques and don’t let other websites steal your PR.
