Guidelines

Every product is looked at technically as well as its presentation.After a product has passed the product review it will be available through theproduct listing page. Please allow a couple of business days for the product tobe reviewed by our team. If you wish to request a product review beforepurchase, you can do so by clicking on the option “Request code review”located at the product page.

Warning:

As per the industry’s common coding best practice, never put API keys inside the source code programming language files.

PieceX uses a code insights feature to show a short preview of your source code. To avoid sensitive information regarding API keys being disclosed in the code preview, please use external files or any other mechanism so that sensitive information or API keys are not disclosed inside the source code (programming language files).

Scope

The scope of your product, meaning the amount of functionality contained inyour product and how that functionality is expressed in code complexity,majorly contributes to its perceived quality.

A very useful code base will feature a lot of robust and flexible functionalities.Products, which are very narrow in scope and only solve a tiny problem withvery little code, especially if the problem is obscure and/or on a little usedplatform or language, will be removed from the platform. The more completea product is the better, unless it is an excellent, easy to integrate powerfulmodule. Products that mainly consist of design work like html/css layouts arediscouraged. Lines of code to factor in, generally, especially if inflated.

Shady themes: Certain use-cases and types of products will have a bad lookand/or be only useful for illicit activities. For instance a hacking tool may beused by white hat hackers for intrusion testing, but for the majority of peoplesuch tools will have a bad look with the implication that it is being sold forillicit uses. Hacking, cheating, cracking, tricking systems etc.

Listing

Your product listing shall contain in-depth details of the technicalities of yourproduct, its features, how to use it, problems it solves, how to integrate it,guiding, support and so on. Bad formatting, style, bad information, lack of information will reflect negatively on your product. Use text to convey information and use images for visual appeal. The stylistic look of your listingmatters; it is your display where you sell the product. As such it shall lookprofessional and appealing to buyers. Spellcheck, do not copy any text.

Disallowed:Never include direct contact information in your listing thatcircumvents the PieceX platform.

The cover image of your product listing and the title are the first thing anyonesees. This means these have to be fine-tuned and be professionally made.Besides the cover image, your screenshots should be illustrative and helpful.We also feature a video embedding to showcase your product.

What not to do: Wrong aspect ratios, simple screenshots, uninformative orunappealing cover images.

Your listing is an advertisement; Treat it with the appropriate amount ofmarketing effort and presentation quality.

Listing shall be in English.

User guide documentation

The user guide document is highly important as we treat this document asthe official documentation your product comes with. As such it shall serveand include multiple types of information:User Manual information which explains how to use the product generally,how to change it, how to integrate it, what to look out for and its technical specifications.

Service Manual information which will talk about the code structure, thirdparty code/dependencies, potential bugs and problems and how to fix them.Installation instructions detailing exactly how to build, compile, link, deployand run your product, including credentials.

Usernames

Your username is the label, the brand, your product has. If your product hasno or bad branding, there is a lack of customer confidence. So make sure tobrand yourself and your products in a professional manner.

Interface

Unless your product is a bare module that cannot be used by itself, it will havesome kind of interface for the user or for other code to connect to and use.

This interface should be clean, clear, easy to use and designed in a modernattractive fashion. For example a desktop program that features an UI thatlooks and interacts similar to ancient design principles of the 1990s, yourproduct will not be regarded well in this aspect. The same goes for APIinterface and such.

Easy of use and integration

You are selling a code base, How easy is it to launch, compile, run, integrateand deploy the code base you are selling. This issue is besides the productinstructions. Even with instructions, the design of your product will be judgedon how easy it is to integrate it into other products. How easy is it to use forarbitrary customers to integrate and change your product. How easy it is, ingeneral, to get it up and running.

Binaries: Do not include binaries. This also applies for apk files and such.Since a binary can execute arbitrary code on a buyer machine, this representsa fundamental security concern. It is also not needed since the buyer shouldbe able to easily build from source.

Readability

The source code must be in readable form, available for comprehension, interpretation, and execution. As such, we do not accept any type of code obfuscation, encryption, or technique that makes the code unintelligible.

Tests

You are encouraged to provide packaged tests and test cases with your codebase, so that after running your code base, customers can easily run these tests and verify everything is working as intended. This is especially useful for modules and generally for integrations.

Maintenance

If you have not changed your product or listing in a long while, PieceX will notify you that your product has been marked for maintenance. In order to maintain our quality standards, products that have reached a certain age are marked for maintenance. These products require the seller to submit an update or to confirm that the current code is still operational. Lots of codebases depend on external data sources and APIs to function, which can change over time. If your product has been marked for maintenance, please check and edit your product or submit an update. Until this is done, products will remain marked for maintenance.