Is Your RAP Installation Easy To Spoof?

Rapid Action Profits (RAP) is a terrific platform for building simple ecommerce sites when you only have one product to sell at a time.  It’s not a general “shopping cart” in that sense, but it does have all the features of a shopping cart — except it’s limited to only one product purchase at a time.

Someone in the RAP forum posted  a review by a guy who said this:

“What sucks: This software is extremely easy to spoof…”

In a way, this guy is right.

A better way to put it is:

What sucks: no matter how many times you tell people how to do something in a particular way and why, they’ll ignore what you say and do it another way that leaves security holes.  Then they’ll blame the software and tell others it’s as leaky as a sieve.  (Or that it’s “extremely easy to spoof”.)

Here are the primary things people do NOT do when setting up their RAP site:

* rename the downloads folder to something other than ‘dlds’
* put a dummy index.html file inside of their downloads folder — allowing anybody to view a list of files in it and grab whatever they want at any time
* install updates and patches in a timely manner
* use RAP’s built-in download link structure to get protected links, and instead put direct DL links on their pages
* edit ALL of the RAP template files, and especially ignore footers on other templates, so there’s no way to find out who to contact in case of errors.  This makes people angry and more likely to pass around your DL links or even your DL files, as well as lies about your product(s) and site.

Why?

“It’s too complicated”
“I can’t figure it out”
“This is the only way I could get it to work”
“I’m going to wait for the next major release before I update my files”
“I’m in a hurry to get this launched and just don’t have the time”
“I”m only concerned about the sales page.  I dont’ care how the other pages look”

I’ve heard these excuses time and time again.

If you’re setting up a RAP site, make sure that you attend to these basic things and your site will be not be one of the ones that falls into the “easy to spoof” category!

BTW, I can help you with your RAP installations, repairs, getting it to work right or better, and also make sure that the above issues are not putting your site at risk.  Contact me for assistance.

Also, I’ve got a really detailed guide I’ve written that has recently been expanded to handle more of these “getting started” kinds of topics.  It’s entitled “Advanced Marketing Solutions Using Rapid Action Profits“.  Nearly half of the content is basic material that I’ve learned from my own RAP sites, as well as from helping others with their RAP sites.  So don’t let the title fool you — this eBook is suitable for newbies as well as more experienced RAP users.

(If you purchase a copy of RAP through my link, send me an email with your purchase info and I’ll give you a free copy of this eBook!)

-David