Sorry for the delay in responding - only seeing this today.

I think option #1 is the one I've seen most often. As to which is BEST or industry-standard, I don't know.

I did not test your last EXE as Windows Defender was flagging it as a virus and didn't allow me to download it. I can work around it but just haven't done so yet. But thought you should know that something is different in your latest version. The previous version had no download issues while the current one does.