Software Review - The Chameleon Suite of Products
This is the first in what I hope will become a regular series on the site featuring full reviews of software and scripts that are useful to webmasters. Today I’m going to cover the Chameleon Suite of products including the submitter, confirmer and partner requester.
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
The Chameleon Submitter started coming to life near the end of 2000 as the dream-child of a group of people that submitted MPG and TGP galleries on a daily basis who wanted something to streamline the process and make things easier. The core of the Chameleon team is based in picturesque with other members of the team and contract workers scattered all over the globe. As Chameleon Submitter came together the team realized they needed a way to easily confirm the 100’s of confirmation emails that you get when submitting a gallery and the development for the Chameleon Confirmer began. As the TGP game evolved with more and more sites starting to require partner accounts to submit to them the team came up with the idea for a program that would help automate the process of requesting and keeping track of partner accounts. As the team released the Chameleon Partner Confirmer they tweaked it to work seamlessly with their submitter bringing together a suite of programs that will let you get partner accounts, manage them, submit galleries and confirm emails.
SUBMITTER AND CONFIRMER
Simply put the Chameleon suite of programs helps you automate just about every aspect of the gallery submission process. You create a gallery, tell it what categories it belongs in, write a few descriptions for it and the software will duplicate the gallery, create sample thumbs, put the correct recips on each page and even upload them to your server if you choose to configure the FTP option in the program. Once the galleries are duplicated and uploaded you then submit. The submitter breaks this process down into two different sections. There is an auto submit section which requires no input from you and seems to cover the majority of the galleries and there is a manual submit section that is more like a semi-automated submit section. You have a window open up to the submit page for the site and the software fills in almost all the information. Typically all you have to do is type in any specific verification code and hit submit. On some of these pages it will also fill the code in so all you have to do is hit submit.
Once you are done with the submissions you are taken to a results screen that shows you the results of every gallery that was submitted. If you had some that didn’t go through you have the option of going back and doing them manually. This process will generate a large number of confirmation emails. I find that my typical submit will get me between 100-140 confirmation emails. If you use the Chameleon Confirmer it will log into your email server and confirm all of those emails in a matter of minutes instead of you sitting there for an hour clicking links.
THE PARTNER ACCOUNT REQUESTER
The Partner Account Requester is a program that automates the request and management of partner accounts. I have been using the submitter and confirmer for a while, but this was the item I was most interested in for a couple of reasons. First, it is hard to get anyone on the webmaster boards to post their actual results with this product and second, as far as I am aware, Chameleon is the only company that offers a product like this. I was really curious to know if it is worth the price or if it a bitch to use.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the ease in using this piece of software. Setting it up is pretty simple. You simple install it then download the database and create a profile with your name and information about you. I did run into a small snag here. There is a section where you format what you want the email you will be sending to look like and at first glance I was confused. However, I clicked the help button and their documentation cleared it up for me. They also give you a test option so you can see how it will look and make sure it is correct before you start submitting requests. From here you import your galleries. You can either put your galleries into the system by hand or import them from the Chameleon Submitter. If you do different types of galleries like movie and picture galleries or you work in several different niches I would suggest waiting to do this until you have submitted a decent amount of galleries so you have plenty to import. The more galleries you can import the more partner accounts you can get.
Once the galleries are imported the software auto-generates the list of sites you are going to submit to and you start the process. These submissions are not 100% automated. It is like the manual submit process on the submitter. If the site has a form for you to fill out the program auto fills in the form and you just click submit. If the site wants an email the system generates the email and sends it. If I could offer a word of advice it would be to select the “submit later” option on certain sites. I ran into about 45 sites that had a different type of system that they used to grant partner accounts. You had to create a username and password which it automatically approves then you log in and have to submit three sample galleries. The software will not auto-fill this in so you have to manually put in the urls. I selected “submit later” on all of these then once I had a good list of urls at the ready I did them all at once. For me it was just easier to do this way. The entire process took me around three hours.
MANAGEMENT
Managing the database for the partner requester is pretty easy. Once you have submitted a request for a partner account the database will mark it as “submitted”. If you get a partner account for a site you can select the site, mark it as “approved” and enter in your username and password. The database keeps track of all your partner accounts and will even keep track of paid partner accounts you may have purchased and give you a warning when they are about to expire. You can export this database right into the submitter so transferring all your partner accounts over only takes a few clicks of the mouse.
RESULTS
I wasn’t sure what to expect with the Partner Requester. I expected the worst and hoped for the best. I was very pleasantly surprised with that I did get. Within 24 hours I had received around 40 partner accounts. Within another 24 hours I had gotten approximately another 25. From there they came in a few each day and now, almost a week later, I have gotten a total of about 75 partner accounts and I seem to still get a few new ones every day. I have to say that this far exceeded my expectation. My submissions are drawing more confirmation emails so I would assume my galleries are now showing up on many more sites.
UPDATES AND FUTURE
The Chameleon suite is a live program which means it is always being improved and updated. They are constantly updating and database and actually have people dedicated to updating/repairing the database and making sure that all the information in the database is accurate. Often there are updates weekly, if not daily. Michael from the Chameleon team even joked with me that upkeep of the database is such a big job that he “sometimes sees the TGP/MGP sites in my dreams while he sleeps.”
MY COMPLAINTS
I don’t really have many bad things to say about the product. My only complaint would be that there are consistently about 6-8 sites that I submit to that even in the manual submit mode see me as auto-submitting and require me to open the submit page in my browser and do these by hand. For me it’s not a big deal, I just added them to the sites I hand submit to, but I would love to see them figure out a way to avoid this from happening, or come up with a way to switch to a full manual mode just for those few sites because it can be a little annoying. Also I would love to see a way to have the confirmer actually scan my email client and not just my email sever. I have used a confirmer in the past that would do either and from time to time I make the mistake of checking my email before running the confirmer. As soon as I hit the send/receive button on Outlook I realize what I did and I understand I am now going to have to spend a while clicking links.
FINAL RESULTS
I have used several gallery submitters during my career as an adult webmaster and I will say that the Chameleon Submitter is the best of the group I have used. The database management is easy, the software and database are constantly updated and improved and most importantly it is easy to use. I don’t want to spend the time having to figure out how to operate a piece of software that has a steep learning curve. These three programs all have easy to use, well written documentation and they are easy enough to use that any webmaster can have them up and running smoothly within about 30 minutes.
I was very happy with how easy to use the Partner Requester was and I was overjoyed with the results.
I guess, when it comes to the Partner Requester, the final question is could I have saved my money and done this on my own. The answer to that is yes, but how much time would I have spent doing this? The Partner Requester had gathered sites for me to request accounts from, imported my galleries and had my requests done within about 3 hours of starting. If I were to do this all by hand I would have spent a week or longer gathering all the information and submitting it. For the cost it is well worth the time it will save you. Also it is regularly updated so as new sites get added to the database you can quickly request partner accounts.
COMING UP
The Chameleon Team is currently beta testing a link list submitter. Details are still a little hush hush, but Michael from the Chameleon Team tells me that it will work much like the submitter and will streamline link list submissions. He says the beta test is going well and they are looking forward to having it out on the market soon.
IN CLOSING
For me there are a few essential pieces of software that any webmaster needs including an html editor, a thumb creator, a graphics program like Photoshop and a gallery submitter. I hope to review more of these for you in the weeks to come. If you are in need of a submitter Chameleon is a great place to start. The price is very affordable and all of the programs pay for themselves almost instantly just in the time you save by using them. The Chameleon Submitter costs $24.95 per month or $179 per year. The Chameleon Confirmer costs a one time fee of $29. The Chameleon Partner Requester costs $99 for 3 months or $249 per year. They also offer an affiliate program for people wanting to promote their software. You can see all their products at http://www.chameleonsubmitter.com
Reader Comments: (2 posts)
Ranessa says: I was looking evrewyhere and this popped up like nothing! |
December 10th, 2011 at 4:17am EST Rating: |
Rob says: awesome softwares |
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:15am EST Rating: |