Questions about download tracking

[Nightracer]

I'm going to track my downloads using PHP and needed some input.

1) I'd like the user to fill out a form with his/her name and email. Is this a good idea or bad? How do most people view this? Do they fill out the form or not?

2) What information should I collect? IP? What good is it? Browser Type? Why? etc.

3) Should I host my files in a database or not? Should I use a download.php?id=file.zip type structure?

4) Is certain referers blockable in PHP?

Thanks

[Chrisms]

Originally Posted by Nightracer

I'm going to track my downloads using PHP and needed some input.

1) I'd like the user to fill out a form with his/her name and email. Is this a good idea or bad? How do most people view this? Do they fill out the form or not?

2) What information should I collect? IP? What good is it? Browser Type? Why? etc.

3) Should I host my files in a database or not? Should I use a download.php?id=file.zip type structure?

4) Is certain referers blockable in PHP?

Thanks

1) fill out a form, with an email saying where you can find the download link? That's a decent idea. but i know i hate giving my email out. But, if you go that way, you can have it email and then have it link to like, ?ID=rggiofw459085mbsfda and then in teh database that random letters i just button mashed will have a file associated with it, and when you look for that ID, it prompts the user to download that file.

2) Why do you need information?

3) see number 1 if you're going to do emails.

4) Yeah, I do belive, correct me if im wrong, you can see where the user came from. And then just block it with like, searching the array of blocked refferers for that referer.

[Nightracer]

Thank you for your input! I've made a basic info collector that gets their name and email address. I'm not sure what I should do with this as it seems like spam since they didn't opt-in to my newsletter.

[Frantic]

To me, this is turn-off when I go to download software. Unless I really need it and there are no alternatives, I will not download it.