Winautomation vs. Ubot vs. Visual Studio

extor

extor

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Nov 1, 2008
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I was in half a mind to make a post in the botting FAQ but this is not entirely about the nuts and bolts of a particular problem. So my question is to those of you who have worked with ubot, winautomation and Visual studio. I'm planning to dive into one or two of these and leaning towards VS. What I plan to do mainly is make bots that would emulate the actions of something like wiki bomber, drupalicious or tweek attacks and such. So basically it will be GETting and POSTing to web sites. Kinda like what xrumer does but highly specialized per platform and of course it has to be a standalone executable.

From what I gather it would be easiest to start out with ubot, then winautomation and finally VS with C# would be hardest to master. However, I've played around with programming a bit and a few years ago also messed with VS and C++ and just wrote a few test apps that read from and wrote to files for fun.

At one point I know ubot had superior web enablement compared to winautomation which was just a desktop task tool but with version 4.0 winautomation now has a web recorder so it may be equal in caliber to ubot now?

So two questions. Firstly, if I am willing to invest an extra 100 hours or so into learning the ropes for VS plus C# on top of the presumably 50 hours or so I'd need to reach expert proficiency with ubot or winautomation would that enable me to perform any magic with a scraping/posting bot produced by Visual studio that I could NOT otherwise do with the other two tools?

Secondly, can either ubot or wa do anything wrt to web scraping bots that the other cannot do now that wa has a web recorder? This is for someone familiar with both. Thanks. :cool:
 


extor said:
Firstly, if I am willing to invest an extra 100 hours or so into learning the ropes for VS plus C# on top of the presumably 50 hours or so I'd need to reach expert proficiency with ubot or winautomation would that enable me to perform any magic with a scraping/posting bot produced by Visual studio that I could NOT otherwise do with the other two tools?
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Go straight to VS and C# and skip the other two. Anything that can be done with UBot can be done better with C# (or any other language fo that matter).

Macro "bots" are ok to a point, but if you trying to do complex tasks then your going to hit a wall sooner rather then later.

Don't get me wrong though, C# (and other langauges) can be a pain in the ass but in the long run they are far more powerful.
 
uBot is fine if you don't want to code, Visual studio would mean that you learn programming for real.

::emp::
 
acidie said:
True, but teach a man to fish...
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+1 for this
but some contradiction with it..

Yes teach a man to fish then he'll learn to live by himself.
But remember we are in an Internet Marketing Forums.. and Internet marketing is Marketing. So if the OP is doesn't have any programming experience why go with studying Languages? Just for me I go with Ubot / Zennoposter as the learning curve is easy to digest... spend a day with it and you're good to go rather than go with programming.

I'm saying because since we are in the Marketing industry just focus on something that you're good at and let others do the things you can't do yourself.. Like hire a programmer to do the coding if it can't be done easily on Ubot / zennoposter.. so that the time saves by studying Programming Languages can be focused on studying the ups and downs of Internet marketing which is the Primary targets why we are building this softwares..

But if the OP has some programming language exp and it will only take him 1-2 weeks to master VS and C#. then I suggest go with it. If more than a month go with Zenno poster/ Ubot and focus the time saved on marketing and let other programmers do the programming.

Just my 2 cents
 
Thanks for the input guys. Yes, OP does have some rudimentry programming skills and even though this is an IM forum OP as of today has yet to really put his heart and passion into failing at IM hard enough to be dubbed a seasoned marketer.

An example of my mindset follows. In 2009 I bought Xrumer and ended up using it only to sell blasts to other people who knew what they were doing with SEO. Then I offered hosting to people who used Xrumer but kept getting kicked out. I also sold lists to xrumer users and also offered tweaking services as well as xrumer mods. Do you see the pattern here? I am very comfortable being a provider of technical services to marketers as opposed to being one. I missed the 2009 acai/rebill gravy train that a lot of WFers rode but have kept an interested eye on some of the IM gossip since then. If I were indeed a technically inept high rolling IMer doing thousands a day in revenue then yeah even ubot might be a waste of time because of the predictable outcome: frustration.

Don't get me wrong, I do want to get a grip on PPC and SEO one day but I've seen decent ROI on my time and efforts by just being an autist providing services to marketers so I want to immerse myself in botmaking just so that I have the best toolbox on the block before throwing myself at SEO. And PPC I gather is something best tried after you dabble in SEO learning the ropes. So, C# and Visual Studio it is.
 
extor said:
And PPC I gather is something best tried after you dabble in SEO learning the ropes.
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PPC and SEO are not very related skills. It would be similar to comparing a coder with somebody who repairs computer parts. Both are related to computers but they require very different skills.

Based on everything you've said, I'd guess your skills are better suited for SEO than for PPC.
 
What I plan to do mainly is make bots that would emulate the actions of something like wiki bomber, drupalicious or tweek attacks and such. So basically it will be GETting and POSTing to web sites. Kinda like what xrumer does but highly specialized per platform and of course it has to be a standalone executable.
Click to expand...
If this is what you want to do, then is no competition. Learn to code and make bots that replicate the headers sent between browser and server. Not a browser base bot, but sending the raw information as logged via fiddler2 / liveheaders. Ubot has it's place and can be used to great effect, but it isn't to do the above. So from your choice, get a copy of Visual studio 2010 express and set about learning C# Would recommend you purchase / find a copy of "How to make bots in C#" pdf, from the Heaton Institute, or something like that. It will step you through the basics, and provide code samples. Then make a simple bot. It will be crap and buggy, doesn't matter. You will learn and be starting to develop a framework. The next bot you make will still be crap, but less crap. You will then start to see a lot of code reuse. Code this into an object framework. Then after a while you can bang out bots simply and easily. Good luck
 
I'm using ubot and winauto. Learned winauto first, it was super easy but is CRAP when it came to web automation. Then learned UBOT, a lot more to learn, but within a few days was able to pretty much automate ANYTHING on the web.

If you're looking to scrape, post, or do whatever on the WEB, use Ubot.
 
I'm no Automation master, and frankly hate to program!
but just like you had to find a solution for a spacific problem (this is what we are doing fixing small problems, while building systems to make the cash flow in).

My prob. was: how do i copy data every week, from around 300 sites that I own to an excel, so I just downloaded WinAuto and tried it out, After 30 min of playing with it I already know how to do what I wanted.

So the reall question that you need to ask here is, whats the purpose of the tool/skill you want to acquire.. .

Is it for solving and automation a small thing?
Is it for building a software and selling it later?

For the more advanced automation it sure looks like Ubot is a winner, but for the easier tasks, WinAuto might do the trick...
 
if you are wanting to do threading....imho, by far, go with C# or Visual Basic .net

also been looking @ python lately....depending on what you ant to do--might be worth checking out..


performance boost over others....can't even really compare them.
 
emp said:
Err... Wut? web scraping is basically what uBot does best.

::emp::
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I wasn't aware of what it did, I assumed it was a software that followed your clicks or something like that. I was speaking out of my ass, but I still think writing a scraper in c# is easier. (once you know what you're doing that is).
 
I coded for ages (C# is no stranger) and for full-blown custom bot projects it is sometimes better to code them from scratch.

For small to medium sized stuff or one-off scraping / bot tasks, uBot is simpler and simply faster.

Pro Tip:
After admitting to talking out of your ass, just stop.

::emp::
 
Been using Zennolab for a few months as I just don't have time to learn to code in python or C# right now.

Zenno is pretty powerful once you get the hang of it.
 
I think this comes down to time and commitment on your part. Learning C# in the end would be best but will consume the most amount of time you can program for years and not 'master' it. It will probably take you a few weeks before you get anything running as you would like.

uBot is very easy to learn and there are a fair number of videos and sites that will help you start out. Its good for medium to simple projects like emp said. I have built a lot of scrapers with it and I am selling one commercially online. It is a very handy tool for building simple apps. It will also teach you the basics of coding. You will learn about functions, loops, and variables which are used across all programing languages.

If winautomation is just a macro program then you would be wasting your time with it really.

You may also want to consider learning python, its easier than C# and can do what you want.
 
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