Site and Forum Guidelines and Terms of Use (Updated: 2017-05-21)

Welcome to the PortableApps.com forums! Here, registered members can chat about all things related to portable apps. There are a few simple rules to posting that should be followed:

No Self-Promotional Posting Except PAF Apps - Promoting your own software is not currently permitted except within specific guidelines. If you make a self-promotional post of anything except a PortableApps.com Format app, your post will be edited and your account may be disabled. The exception is if someone asks a question directly related to your product. In addition, if you are releasing a free, portable, open source (OSI-approved license) individual application in PortableApps.com Format that is not a fork or clone of an app hosted here, you may make a post when you do a release. You may also post an app under a freeware license if it is your own publication and in PortableApps.com Format. If open source, the code for this product must be available from the page you link to in your post and your product must properly attribute contributors (so, if you're basing a launcher on a PortableApps.com launcher, for instance, you must credit this on your product page similar to the way the Acknowledgements on this site are posted). These posts must meet the following criteria:

• short - postings of a paragraph or so. no long postings
• simple, friendly language - press releases and marketing-speak have no place in the forums
• infrequent - weekly postings would not be permitted. but one or two postings a month would be fine (this limit is per company/website/entity... all programs and employees/developers that are a part of that entity are counted together)
• properly categorized - beta announcements would go in the beta forum. requests for assistance would go in the development forum.
• program-focused - the announcement should pertain to a specific software release. it should not be advertising your company/website/entity.

Note: You can, of course, pretend that you simply "found" your own software (or your own website, business, etc) and make a posting about it, if you're that type of person. The fee for this is US$10,000.

Homepage Link - You may enter a personal homepage or blog address within your profile. This will appear as a "Homepage" link next to your username when you make posts within the forums. Please do not link to other types of sites.

Signatures - Please refrain from posting links, email addresses, character patterns, dividing lines, block tags, bold tags or any other elements to signatures as this distracts from the real content within forum posts.

Check Support Before Posting - If you're having an issue with one of the portable apps published by PortableApps.com, your best bet is to check the support page first. You can find it by clicking the Support link at the top of the page and then selecting the Support Page for the app in question.

Search the Site Before Posting - There's a chance that what you're posting about has been mentioned before. Posting about it again only serves to clutter up the forums and make it harder for people to find what they're looking for. So, before you post, use the search function on the top right of this page.

Search the Web Before Posting - If you're having an issue with a portable app, there's a chance that it may be an issue with the app itself and not specific to the portable version. So, you may find the answer to your question by simply searching the web for your issue.

Be Polite and Patient - If you're looking for help with something, feel free to post a question about it. Keep in mind, though, that this is free, open source software. Everyone on here is developing and helping support these apps in their spare time.

Post Details - If you're having a problem, post the pertinent details of your issue. What version of the app you're using. What operating system you're running on. Any extensions or plugins that may be contributing to the problem. What directory you're using it from (or if you're using the standard ones). When requesting apps, include a description of the app (what does it do) and a link to it.

Use a Relevant Subject - You'll be far more likely to get a response and get the appropriate people to read your post if you use an appropriate subject. Subjects like "problem", "error" or "need help" don't help others help you. If you have a problem, what is it? How can you summarize it? "Error in acme.dll on startup" would be a much more useful subject, for instance.

No Bumping - Don't add a comment to a post specifically to get it to move to the top of the recent posts page. This is called bumping and is frowned upon in most public forums as, by bumping a post with a nonsense comment, you push a post with a real comment further down. If people are interested in a post, they will see and comment on it. No bumping required.

No Multiposting - Don't post the same thing to multiple forums or post it more than once if your first post doesn't get a reply right away. This clutters up the forums and makes it harder for everyone to read everything.

One Account Per Person - Only one account per person, please. Sometimes on forum sites, people create secondary accounts to flame other people or to post a second message to their own topic, making it seem like there is more interest or agreement with their point of view. If your account is blocked for abuse, you may not create another one. Accounts may not be shared.

Legal Agreement - By visiting this website and these pages, signing up for an account, using our platform or services, or simililar you are entering into a legally binding agreement (even if you are using our services on behalf of a company) with Rare Ideas, LLC, the legal entity within which PortableApps.com exists. This agreement includes these forum-wide guidelines and terms of use, our privacy policy, our copyrights and trademarks policy, and other terms that will be displayed to you at the time you first use certain features (such as signing up for a newsletter or registering for our forums), as may be amended from time to time. If you do not agree to these agreements, do not register for an account, sign up for our newsletter, or access or otherwise use our services.

No Scraping or Automation - You may not use manual or automated software, devices, scripts robots, other means or processes to access, "scrape", "crawl", "spider", or "cache" any of our content, services, updater database, or related data. An exception is made for search engines and similar services which index the entire web for public use provided they operate in accordance with our robots.txt and similar automation directives.

No Direct Linking or Direct Downloads - Directly linking to application downloads or images (hot-linking) is not permitted. Our download services on PortableApps.com and our associated download servers is for use by our users visiting the PortableApps.com website and downloading our apps in their web browser and for users of the PortableApps.com Platform downloading our apps within the platform's app store and updater. Third party software and services may not make use of our download servers without the express written consent of PortableApps.com.

Legal Software Only - Only links to legal software are permitted. Links to pirated software or unauthorized modifications of closed source software are not permitted. Accounts used to post such links may be banned.

Play Nice - This community is only as strong as its members. As such, everyone is expected to conduct themselves accordingly. Name-calling, insults, etc have no place here. This shouldn't even have to be mentioned, but there have been some bad apples in the past.

Thanks for reading and following the simple guidelines outlined above. We hope you enjoy the site.

Regards,
John

Version History

2017-05-21 - Added direct download linking, direct image linking and third party prohibitions
2016-08-24 - Added scraping and legal agreement details
2015-04-02 - Added ability to make posts about freeware in PortableApps.com Format
2010-04-16 - Added website, business, etc to the spam policy to cover additional spammers
2009-08-01 - Added requirement that apps be in PortableApps.com Format for self-promotion in preparation for PAF 1.0 release
2007-10-02 - Updated signature guidelines to remove links and add them as a homepage item in your profile that is shown in posts (new feature)
2007-10-02 - Original Version