Thread: New Releases 8.0.1.4 and 9.1.0.1 licensing method

There seems to be a lot of confusion concerning the new licensing methods. In the initial release (ML8.0.1.3 and MultiStore 9.1.0.0) there were a few problems with the licensing. These have been ironed out now, so if you are still having an issue with licensing after reading this and generating a proper license, UPDATE and REGENERATE the license again from your My Licenses page. If you cannot generate a proper license (cannot enter proper domain), submit a support ticket and we'll generate it for you.

The list of urls your license will work for when generating a BLANK license file:

1. localhost
2. *.aspdotnetstorefront.*.com

The definitive list of urls your license will work for after entering proper production domain names:

1. localhost
2. *.aspdotnetstorefront.*.com
3. www.mydomain.com
4. mydomain.com

In order for both www.mydomain.com AND mydomain.com to be licensed, the generated license url must contain the www. prefix.

In order for the license to work on your staging sub-domains, the name 'aspdotnetstorefront' is REQUIRED to be in the name as a prefix to .*.com, so you need to name your sub-domains something like:

staging.aspdotnetstorefront.mydomain.com
or even
aspdotnetstorefront.anything.com

When you access the Admin console Configuration - Store Maintenance - Domains from a production url, like https://www.mydomain.com/admin/signin.aspx then you will see green check-marks next to all the properly licensed production urls, AND urls using localhost, but NOT the staging sites (urls using aspdotnetstorefront.*.com).

When you access the Admin console from a STAGING url, like https://staging.aspdotnetstorefront.mydomain.com/admin/signin.aspx then you will see green check-marks next to all the properly licensed STAGING urls, but NOT localhost urls, OR the production sites.

When you access the Admin console from a localhost url, like http://localhost/mydomain/admin/signin.aspx then you will see green check-marks next to all the properly licensed production urls, AND localhost urls, but NOT the staging sites.

When you access the Admin console from an unlicensed url, like https://staging.mydomain.com/admin/signin.aspx then you will see NO green check-marks next to ANY sites, including the localhost, as the license just fails altogether.

Other concerns seem to be "I don't know what url to put yet for my production url."
You get to generate 2 license keys. If you don't know your live domain name yet, then create a BLANK key (do not enter a domain name). This is good for localhost and aspdotnetstorefront.*.com domains. The second time you generate a license, please enter your live domain names.

We are aware that mistakes or confusion can occur with this process, so please submit a support ticket if you are unable to generate a proper license file for your site(s), and we can generate one for you. We will require proper verification for your license of course.

http://support.aspdotnetstorefront.com/

The reason behind the unexpected behavior with the check-marks in the domains tab is that the localhost and production domains are run on a separate license rule than the staging domains.

The side effect of this is that if you have more host headers/bindings for your staging site than just the staging.aspdotnetstorefront.mystore.com type of domain name, then when the site is hit after a site restart and the staging domain is used, then it will unlicense the remaining host headers (production/locahost), and visa versa, until another site restart/cache reset.

Basically be sure that when you are using a staged site per the license name requirements, that it is the only means of accessing the site, and if the same site is turned over to production, remove the staging DNS record so it can no longer be accessed using the staging name.

Another workaround is to set the staging domain as a separate site in IIS.

There still seems to be a little more explanation needed for the new licensing:

The licensing validation occurs at each app pool reset or cache reset. Site restarts can occur during periods of inactivity (Idle Time-out Settings in IIS), and is defaulted to 20 minutes.

When the site is timed out or an app pool reset occurs, the first domain used to access the site is what the license will validate. When you enter the admin console and reset cache, the domain name you accessed the admin with will be validated.

Therefore, in order to maintain valid licensing, you need to remove all invalid domain name access to the site. Have your host setup the host headers in IIS to be only for the valid domain names, and not the IP address as well.

When absolutely necessary, we can add additional domain names/host headers to your license. Submit a support ticket for these requests.