PADSite : Java Glossary

A PADSite aka download site is a website that displays PAD (Portable Application Description) files. It may also allow users to download zips directly from their site. Authors of progams submit pads for their various pay and free programs. PADSite vendors also collect them from competitors and from the AppVisor website. A PADSite makes its revenue from ads.

The owner of a PADSite is plagued with bogus PADs (Portable Application Descriptions), that contain ads, trojans, spam, blithering nonsense. To discourage this they may institute various measures to make submitting a PAD more inconvenient and difficult to automate. I have noticed that the the sites that use no hassling measures tend to stay in business and those that do have a short life.

Decline

The number of PADSites has drastically dropped. There used to be about 250 of them the Mini PAD submitter tracked. It has dwindled to 66 PADsites. The new ASP (Association of Shareware Professionals) scheme for updating PADs takes many times as much work, and does not let you automate changes. There seems to be great reluctance in the programmer and PADSite community to embrace the PAD 4.0 standard.

Maintaining PADs with the version 4 ASP online editor is an order of magnitude slower than the old PAD editor scheme. Further there are long delays to get your changes OKed by ASP staff.

Only a small handful of PADSite get their pads through the official ASP channel. The problem is it make all sites identical. They no longer have any sort of competitive advantage. The advantage is ASP filters out the spam for them.

Lists

I maintain various lists of PADSites.

menu

PAD file Format	No Hassle Sites	PAD Submitting Tips
PAD Editors	AppVisor Sites	PAD Submission Services
PAD Creating Tips	Hassle Sites	Mini PAD Submitter
PADSites	Candidate Sites	Automated PAD Submitters
Manual PAD Submission	Dead Sites	Links
Important Sites	Money Handling