Ask Felgall

Since I started selling PHP scripts from my site I have had three copies of one or other of my scripts stolen. I know this because right from when I first started selling the scripts I have had code in place to at least track when a copy of one of the scripts I have for sale has been downloaded.

The first occasion when I had a script stolen was before I implemented the IPN script that automatically emails the purchased script to the buyer after Paypal clears their payment. Back then I had a link from the page that you get to after making the purchase that allowed the buyer to download the script. In this particular instance the thief simply looked up the destination page in the source code of the page that linked to Paypal and went there directly without actually going via Paypal. Paypal has since introduced a way to encrypt the form to prevent this from being able to be done. What this thief didn’t know was that the page with the download link was set up to email me whenever a copy of the script was downloaded and since the download was actually done by emailing the script to the buyer, the thief had to give me their email address in order to steal the script. Due to the time that they picked to steal my form2mail advanced script I was able to watch them install the script on their site and soon after they finished installing the script I used their new contact form to contact them to advise them that I knew they had stolen the script and would take further action if it was not removed immediately. Since their site was actually part of a school web site competition it would have been very easy for me to advise the competition organiser if they hadn’t complied and removed the script. I am still not sure why they stole my advanced script since the free version would have been quite adequate for what they needed.

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It suddenly occurred to me a few days ago that it had been quite a while since I had last reviewed the prices that I have on the various scripts, memberships etc on the site.

In the case of all the scripts I have for sale I have prices showing in both US and Australian dollars. While the Member’s Area silver and gold membership prices are only listed in US dollars, I have to convert all the money I receive to Australian dollars when I transfer it to the bank.

Since I had last updated the prices there has been a significant change in the Australian to US dollar exchange rate. The obvious thing to do first was to adjust all of the US dollar prices on the scripts to reflect the current equivalent to the listed Australian dollar prices. Note that while this means an increase in price for those buying from outside Australia, it simply means that I will get the same money as I was getting 12 months ago instead of a lower amount.

The next place to update the prices is the Silver and Gold memberships in the Member’s Area. I haven’t actually done that yet. Instead I have decided to hold off on that price correction for a few weeks so that you effectively have a couple of weeks in which to purchase those memberships at an effectively discounted price. I will not be holding off for too long though so if you want to save some money on getting access to a whole load of useful scripts templates and ebooks then now is the time. The price increases on the scripts mean that a couple of the scripts that are included in the Gold membership are now selling separately for about the same price as the Gold membership.

The last mainframe job that I had was setting up leased line communications between a major Australian bank and their biggest customers. These communications varied between three different communications protocols depending on the requirements of the other party.

As I was doing that sort of work when I first created the site, I of course included a section on communications software with pages on all three of the protocols i was using.

While few of you will ever come across XCOM or Netmaster, most of you will have heard of FTP.

Communications Software