Tips & Hints for
Shareware/Freeware Authors

General Information: Registration Codes

• Registration Key


• Registration Code


• Licensing Key


• Serialnumber


• Personalisation Key

None

The easiest way is to set up a checkbox titled "I paid". If the user checks it, the "Please pay your shareware fee" dialog will not appear any more.

Secret Actions

You can put a complete input dialog for the registration key into your application, but no value entered there will ever unlock the program. Instead of entering something the user has to do any secret action to unlock it.

For example:

• "Open the about box three times and close it again, then quit the application while holding down the shift key..."


• "Start the application while pressing the shift key, the open the preferences dialog and type the keys X and F..."

Universal Code

You can create one single registration code that you give to every user. All users get the same code...

Random Code

The secret registration code might be randomly constructed. Just some specific characters in the code are derived from other characters, so that your software can check if the code matches the given pattern.

For example:

• The numbers 1, 5 and 10 added together must amount to 15.


• The chars 2 and 11 must be exactly the same.


• Char 3 plus char 6 plus char 9 must be smaller or equal to 7.


• The average of char 4, char 8, char 12 and char 13 must be "4".


• The last char of the code has to be an "Z".

Based on User Data

The registration key may be based on the data you get from the user. It is very common to create the key out of the name of the user... Just play around with the ASCII values of the chars, multiply them, add, convert, invert, etc. You may also include the number of licenses (site licenses) into the key.

Unlocked Version

If a user registeres for your software, just send him an unlocked version of it or give him instructions on how to download that version from your homepage. If you have your own web server you can also set up a folder where the user needs to login in order to get access to it's contents. But be careful that that unlocked version will not get around in shareware archives or CD-ROMs!

Annotations

Do you have any new ideas or aspects? Please let me know. Just send an e-mail to
mkahlert@kagi.com.