Jay Jennings asked: I recently dodged a bullet and while I’d like to think it was because I had such great foresight, I’ll be honest and admit it was simply because I was lazy a while back.
But since it’s a lesson that anyone who writes software (or has software written for them) should think about, I’ll tell on myself so maybe you can dodge this particular pothole. Because if you don’t dodge it your only recourse will be to sit down and cry.
A while back I created a new internet marketing utility and offered master resell rights built-in — which meant that anyone who bought a copy could turn right around and start reselling it. Nice for them — and also for me because the program required you to register it before using. My plan was to use it as a way to build my email list.
The way it works is the person chooses whether to join just the software update list, or that one and a general marketing info list. My plan was to have the software send the email itself, but at the time I didn’t know how to code that piece and so took the easy way out…
…and decided to have the software send the user info to a PHP script on a server and that script would then send the info via email to the subscribe address.
The “bullet” I dodged is that in the last month or two I decided to switch shopping carts, and all my lists were hosted with that service. I started switching things over the weekend and had a sinking feeling –
What about the software subscribing people?
A split-second later I remembered that I didn’t do the “straight to email” method — and breathed a big sigh of relief.
I’m a big proponent of always using link cloakers on web sites — not to hide the link, but so you have complete control over where the link redirects to. I hadn’t been thinking about that when I wrote the software, but lucked out.
If you’re writing software, or having it outsourced, and it needs to access something online, make sure that any address it goes to is controlled by YOU. It should always talk to YOUR server, and if you need to send it on from there, that’s fine. But at least you retain control over what happens even if you switch autoresponders, shopping carts, web hosts, etc.
Being a hotshot programmer is cool — but sometimes being lucky is still good enough.
Bryan
