Comments on: Use Separate Game Purchase & Download Pages (Like buy.php Or download.php)

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 14:17:31 +0000

yep done as suggested now, good idea thanks. Only thing is for the mass shareware site submission (via Pad file) I’m about to do, you can’t end it php, you have to end in .exe or .zip :-(

By: ZeHa

ZeHa — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 09:23:50 +0000

That’s a really cool idea! Especially the statistics stuff you can do with that ;) thanks

By: Frozax Games

Frozax Games — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:01:07 +0000

I’m using links such as:
http://www.frozax.com/atw/*/aroundtheworld.dmg
I can put anything in place of the * and by using URL rewriting and php, I redirect this URL to the real binary file and logs the id (the *) in my logfile. That way, download sites that do not accept php files for download links will take my links and I can perform php stuff. They think it’s a direct link.

By: James Sayer

James Sayer — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 22:03:33 +0000

I do this for my purchase pages, but what about for download pages? I thought that a lot of download sites only allow direct links for the game files. It’s not a big deal anyways because as long as the URL is pointing to your server you can do a redirect.

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:31:31 +0000

You don’t need additional page. But, .php can do some statistics stuff (like check where visitor came from and stuff like that)

By: Jones

Jones — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:19:13 +0000

Nice tip, but I don’t see why you need an additional page. You can just direct directly from .htaccess, even if yoursite.com/game/buy doesn’t exist, you can set up to redirect from there.

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 15:48:22 +0000

@Jetro: nooo… we should *always* use PHP ;)

Eh seriously – your advice is so true. You could simply have /buy/ and then put index.php there (or use .htaccess stuff) to redirect.

By: immersionFX

immersionFX — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 14:30:26 +0000

…not to mention that with this method, you can keep track of your customers ;-)

The “buy.php” or “download.php” page could first create a record of the user’s demographics to a db file before redirecting him/her to the setup file…

php code that does this is available, upon request :)

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 13:06:55 +0000

great advice thanks. I’ll bookmark this page.

By: Jetro Lauha

Jetro Lauha — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 11:42:35 +0000

For the same reason (what if you switch provider/tech), you shouldn’t use “.php” in links, but just e.g. “www.yoursite.com/game/buy”. You can easily set up that with .htaccess RewriteEngine, either to redirect to the eCommerce provider, or to your internal web page (buy.php).