home  previous   next  contents

Shout3D™ 1.0 - User Guide

Registration Codes and the 'branding strip'

The 'branding strip'

Shout3D ordinarily displays a black band across the bottom of each applet, containing the Shout3D logo. Clicking on this band will take you to the Shout3D web site, www.shout3d.com. This black band, or 'branding strip' may be disabled if the html file that invokes Shout3D contains a valid registration code.

Licenses are on a per-domain basis.

Licenses may be purchased (by visiting www.shout3d.com) on a per-domain basis. With each license, you will receive a registration code that removes the branding strip from applets that are served from one domain. In addition, a registered user name is associated with the domain name. when you properly place the registration code and user name into the html file, you can serve it un-branded from anywhere on your domain. For example, purchasing a license for www.mycoolsite.com will allow you to put Shout3D applets anywhere on www.mycoolsite.com. When someone visits that site, the applets will appear on their machines free of branding. A registration code that works for one domain name will not work for other domains. So to publish on multiple domains, you will need to purchase more than one license.

Licenses work for multiple hosts on a domain (new in 1.0.2).

When you purchase a license for a domain, the registration code you receive will work on multiple hosts for that domain. For example, if you place the registration code for www.manyhosts.com in your html file, the branding will be removed whether the applet is served from www.manyhosts.com, server1.manyhosts.com, server2.manyhosts.com, or any other prefixed strings before "manyhosts.com."   This feature is new as of Shout3D version 1.0.2.  Prior to that version, branding would only be removed when served from an exact match (e.g., only from www.manyhosts.com but not the other servers listed in the example).

Multiple registration codes in one html file remove branding on multiple domains (new in 1.0.2).

You can create one single html file that will appear without the branding strip when served from multiple domains.  For example, if you purchase two registration codes, one for www.valley.com and one for www.dolls.com you can put both codes in a single html file and serve the same file from anywhere on either domain.  This feature is new as of Shout3D version 1.0.2.  It will only work if all the registration codes are for the same user name.

Using the Shout3DWizard to write out your registration code.

When you purchase a license for the Educational or Professional version of Shout3D 1.0, you will receive an email with a registration code and name. Attached to the email will also be a small registration.txt file. Copy this file into your Shout3d_wizard directory. Any Shout3D-enhanced html files you produce with the Shout3DWizard from then on will be automatically registered.

Using the Shout3DWizard to write out multiple registration codes (new in 1.0.2)

If you purchase multiple licenses, you will receive more than one registration code.  In order to get the Shout3DWizard to automatically produce content that will contain multiple registration codes, and hence work on multiple domains, put the registration codes in quotes and separate them by semicolons.  For example, if you purchased two licenses for Ann Wells at www.valley.com and www.dolls.com, you'd receive two separate registration files.  The first might be:

"Ann Wells"
S3D00JACQ4199-223

and the second might be:

"Ann Wells"
S3D00SUZN3512-223

In order to create a single registration.txt file that will work on both domains, you would join them as described above to form a single file named registration.txt, and place that file in your Shout3d_wizard directory:

"Ann Wells"
"S3D00JACQ4199-223;S3D00SUZN3512-223"

Following this, all content published by the wizard will be free of branding when served from either domain.  This feature is new as of the Shout3D 1.0.2 release.

How the registration codes look in an .html file

Registration codes are automatically added by the Shout3DWizard as described above.  Sometimes, however, you may want to hand edit your html files to add or change the registration codes.  The registration codes are added as two applet parameters (see the section in this user guide on applet parameters for a brief introduction).  The two required applet parameters are called "regname" and "regcode".

To illustrate, here is an example of the parameters required for the first, single domain, registration code given in the previous section:

<param name="regname" value="Ann Wells">
<param name="regcode" value="S3D00JACQ4199-223"> 

And here is an example of how both registration codes would appear together as applet parameters:

<param name="regname" value="Ann Wells">
<param name="regcode" value="S3D00JACQ4199-223;S3D00SUZN3512-223"> 

Licenses remove the branding strip when you view locally, too.

In addition to working when served from your registered domain, html files that contain a valid registratin code will also remove the branding strip when you run the applets from your local file system. html files that contain no registration code will show the branding strip, even when viewed on your local file system.


Copyright© 1999-2000, Shout Interactive, Inc.