The first step to increase your software sales is submitting your product to download sites and directories. The way this works is by submitting validated PAD files to these websites. If the PAD file is not valid your software is not going to be listed, or is going to be listed with errors, and that will not help in any desired conversion.

If you're a software author, you're probably familiar with those never ending requests and the need of updating the info on your programs, over and over again. The Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) also thought of this and decided to do something about it. That's how the Portable Application Description (PAD) came about.

They define a PAD file as a well-formed, UTF-8 encoded XML 1.0 file containing the data fields listed here.

We included in these PAD validator suggestions made from our own experience with manual software submissions. Even though PAD file is already set as a standard, there are many download portals that come with their own guidelines that are not against the PAD Specifications 3.01. Therefore even if your file respects the standard will still be rejected by the download portal. So we created suggestions that will help you pass most, if not all, the download portals standards.