Just Upload This and Watermark All Your Images Instantly

While not a get rich quick scheme, the statement above sure sounds nice. Not quite “too good to be true” status, I believed it when I was checking out a free PHP script that just required me to upload a file and then watermark my images.

Since I was totally sick of people ripping off my images, I tried it out. Turns out there were a few files to upload (not just one,) and not all of them were included in the download, but I stuck with it.

The script in question is called Active Watermark. The premise is that you upload this script along with a watermark image to your site’s image directory and it will automatically add the watermark to your images. Anyone viewing your images will get the watermarked version, but the script won’t actually change your picture, which is great. However, this thing sucked all along.

First, once I downloaded the unzipped the folder, the README and other files didn’t have extensions. So I had to add a .txt on each, which left the files unformatted and hard to understand. Even worse, only the PHP file was there. The .htaccess file that you need to edit and include was nowhere to be seen! I had to surf the web to get an idea of what to put in there.

I finally had it figured out, and tried various combinations of file placement and folder structure, but to no avail.

Before giving up completely, I found another very similar script out there. This one had fewer options, but it did include all the necessary files, so I liked it… until it didn’t work either.

Oh well. I guess people will keep stealing my images. (That’s still better, or at least easier, than watermarking thousands of images by hand in Photoshop.)

There are two lessons here:

1) Don’t expect free scripts to be amazing.

2) Don’t risk your reputation on a non-working script.

Let me explain number two. ActiveUnit looks like a big-time web services company that does good work. But after seeing this free script, and its level of quality (or lack thereof,) I will probably never to do business with them. They could be a great company, but the lack of attention to detail on this script doesn’t help their image.

If anyone knows of a working script that easily adds watermarks, please let me know. And if anyone got this ActiveWatermark script to work, please share!

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