By visiting (and partially reviewing adult-sites) during the last year I found there are now two different strategies used by websites. The first is to make any downloads as slow as possible and urge you to keep your subscription alive as long as possible. You have to open each picture one after the other (can't even use tabbed browsing and of course not right mouse-click to save directly from the overview) and have to save it individually to your harddrive. A typical representative for this is the Realswingers site - just read my review and you will know what I think of this strategy. But even this can be topped: I was recently subscribed to the Rachel Aziani site-system and found, that all downloading is also hampered this way - even more: Any pic you want to save has the same name so you have to rename each pic you download! I honestly have to say I consider this webmaster behaviour very shortsighted. Most of you will surf adult sites for fun like me, but such sites easily turn into hard work very fast. This is not fun anymore - how can they think we would keep our subscriptions alive for a longer time or even return at a later time? I promise Rachel Aziani will have to wait a long time for me to resubscribe!
The other strategy is the exact opposite of the one described before: Just making the site as comfortable as possible to make the users like it, keep it and come back. This means at first you can download any content with ease - there are not the slightest blocking or hampering measurements. This also means there are ZIP-files available. I have to say ZIP-files are my personally favorites when I visit a site - I normally try to find out before I subscribe to a site whether it uses ZIP files having a look at the preview of the site and of course trying to find an actual review of this site. ZIP files are very comfortable to handle, right-click, download and unpack, that's all. Unpacking nowadays either can be done by using the built-in utility in Windows XP or by several Un-ZIPping programs - some of them of course freely available. Under XP you treat a ZIP-file like a directory and thus can copy any files with ease. I personally have bought PKzip which has some advantages with broken ZIP-files (can repair them) and can be used as a command line tool for faster unzipping. But back to the sites: You can download ZIP-files like pictures, even often parallel or stacked - that's what I call great service!
Just as representatives and examples of this strategy I name the Kelly Madison site and the Teenrotica site, which I reviewed a short while ago. They are all great to visit and paradise for downloaders - I bet you will not be astonished when I'm telling you I was a member of Kelly Madison for four times and I expect that won't be all! As a bottom-line you should clearly understand this: If you want sites to be comfortable to download you have to act politically: Avoid the blocking and uncomfortable sites - prefer those offering a great service!
Stay tuned for part 3 where I will focus on how you make downloading a little easier.
Your guide to better porn!
