Important note: This is a critical review and not a sales letter or an ad!
 

Format

Cgi Perl-script (delivered as an ASCII-file) plus instruction files (delivered as html-files)

Review

What this script does

By owning Master Recommend you can invite your visitors to recommend either your whole web site or just a single page of it, to their friends. This kind of scripts are often called Tell-a-friend-script, Recommend-a-friend-script or something like that. These scripts have been very popular for some time now, and they can be very useful in a Viral Marketing campaign, or if you just want to give your readers the possibility to recommend your web site or individual web pages.

Through the administration panel of the script, you can set up customized forms that your visitors can use for recommending your web site. When they've filled in the form with the recommendation, they'll be directed to another page (typically a "thank you page") of your choice.

When someone has used a form to recommend your web site, Master Recommend Pro can send both you and the person who's recommending your web site, an confirmation email. But this can be customized too.

Features

Here is, at a glance an overview over some of the features of this script:

• Detailed, step-by-step instruction manual.
• When installing the script you don't need to change the code. Everything is done through your FTP client and your browser.
• Excellent administration panel.
• You can generate the tell-a-friend forms directly through the administration panel. Just copy the html-code and insert it into your web (html) editor and upload it to your domain.
• Almost everything can be customized according to your individual wishes and needs - directly through the administration panel.
• Ready-to-use templates for all outgoing emails (sent to visitor, friends and/or webmaster).
• Built-in database (listing all transactions) which can be customized through the admin panel.
• The script can be set to automatically screen abusive language.
• Individual emails addresses can be banned if you want to avoid certain persons to abuse your forms.
• High security. For example, you decide which domains the tell-a-friend forms can be run from.
• etc.

One additional feature which I would like this script to have, is the ability to totally personalize the emails sent from the recommendation form, so that the name and email of poster is inserted into the "From"-field of the recommendation emails (which a friend gets).

However, Will Bontrager has informed me that this feature is probably going to be added to the next upgrade of the script.

When this feature is added to Master Recommend Pro, it'll be even better suited for a Viral Marketing campaign.

Ease of set-up

Just like it's the case with all the other scripts by Will Bontrager, which I've installed, Master Recommend Pro is extremely easy to install. It simply can't be much easier. Even if you've never installed any cgi-script before, you'll find this script (and other scripts by Will Bontrager) very easy to install. Just upload the script to your server, using your favorite FTP-client. Set a few permissions, and you're up and running.

That's it!

Besides, I want to mention that the documentation is very, very good. It doesn't contain a lot of superfluous stuff that you don't need anyway. No, you get just the information you need. And it's easy to understand and apply.

The documentation contains all the necessary details - whether you're beginner or a more experienced cgi-installer. It tells you step-by-step what to do, and it's very pedagogical.

In short, I would wish that other script creators would make their scripts as easy to install as Will Bontrager has made his. And the documentation is super.

Ease of using

This script is really easy to use. 

Practically everything in your forms can be customized through the administration panel (also called control panel).

I know very few other programmers who create such helpful and detailed control panels as Will Bontrager does. Everywhere in the administration panel you find Will's short and right-to-the-point explanations, telling you what each new field, button etc. means.

Let me just give you a few examples of what you can do through the administration panel. 

You can enter forbidden words to use in the emails send. This makes it more difficult to abuse your recommendation forms. Of course they can still be abused, but it's more difficult if you use this feature. One little criticism here, is that you aren't told whether you'll have to use commas, tabs or spaces to delimit the  "dirty" words from one another.

Generating the recommendation forms possibly can't be easier. As the instructions in the administration panel says, "Answer a few questions and click the button. A form will automatically generate for you. Then just copy the form and paste it into your page."

Through the administration panel you can even choose the number of columns you want your forms to be spread over.

And if you want to preview the look of the generated form, just click on a link and you'll be able to preview the form in your browser.

The only step which can be a little bit difficult, is if you want to change the forms generated by the script and don't know how to edit html-code. However, it isn't that difficult, and of course it hasn't anything to do with the script itself. If you don't know how to edit html-code, you'll easily be able to find good html-tutorials all over the Internet.

Of course you don't need to change the forms generated by Master Recommend Pro. You can just use them as they are. They look fine and are ready to use. But personally I wanted to change the look a little bit. 

The form I generated looked like this:

But I wanted the form to look something like this:

So, I just had to change a few html tags. Nothing really complicated.

But that's of course totally up to you and what best suits your needs.

In short, everyone can use this script to set up an effective Tell-a-friend-form on his or her web site. Just follow the step-by-step instructions - either in the manual or in the administration panel - and you'll be up and running.

How well the script works

I've now tested Master Recommend Pro for some time, and in my experience it works really, really well. I haven't encountered any problems. It can be terrible annoying if you've set up a script, only to find out some time later that you've lost a lot of valuable input from your visitors, because the script has a bug. But, again, in my experience this script works very well.

As always - so far as I can judge - Will Bontrager has done his best to prevent any security problems in his scripts. 

The only possible security improvement I suggest, is to place a limit on the length of input that can be entered in the form fields. It's very simple to do that. Just use the <MAXLENGTH=n> tag (where "n" represents the maximum number of letters or numbers that can be entered into your form). By doing this, you don't risk that anyone enters hundreds or even thousands of characters into your form and overload your server. If you want to see how you can add the <MAXLENGTH=n> tag to a form, you can take a look at the source (html-)code of the form I've inserted above.




Overall assessment

Master Recommend Pro is an excellent script. It really works fine. It has all the flexibility that you need in order to set up effective tell-friend-forms on your web site.

I've tested a lot of Tell-a-friend scripts, and in my opinion Master Recommend Pro is one of the absolute best scripts of this kind.

If you're looking for a solid and effective Tell-a-friend-script for your web pages, you can't go wrong by buying this script.

Price (at the time of this writing)

US $45.00

About William Bontrager

Who is William Bontrager? Click here for the answer!
 
 

Buying information

Website 

http://www.willmaster.com

Email

http://willmaster.com/contact.shtml

Snail mail

William and Mari Bontrager
RR 1, Box 271-B
Solsberry, IN 47459
USA

Phone

812.935.8269