Software Licensing version 3.4.8

If you’re a Software Licensing customer, you may have noticed we released version 3.4.8 of the extension. This is on the larger side of a minor release, tackling just over 30 issues, mainly bug fixes with some new enhancements as well. While most of these changes are pretty minor, there are a few substantial changes we wanted to call out for you.

Deprecate _edd_sl_site_count post meta

This post meta item was found to be created with a license, but never updated or used to calculate the number of sites. We’ve written an upgrade routine to remove these entries and also a backwards compatibility check so that if it is requested, a proper site count is returned using the helper function edd_software_licensing()->get_site_count(). When WP_DEBUG is enabled, a deprecated notice will show.

Updated Sample Theme

We made a few changes to the sample theme to improve it’s reliability in showing the update counts properly. Please update your themes with the new version of the updater.

Updated Sample Plugin

The Sample plugin has been updated including the primary class EDD_SL_Plugin_Updater. The new version is 1.6.4 and is included in the sample plugin, and fixes some issues with using the updater on a network enabled site. If you use this class in your plugin, you’ll want to update it.

Sample Theme/Plugin error handling

Both the theme and plugin examples have been improved to include inline error handling. If a license fails to activate or deactivate, error messages will be shown as an Admin Notice to the user. This will make debugging customer activation issues much easier. You’ll need to take a look at the samples and implement them in your customer activation and deactivation methods.

Manage Sites template changes

We’ve updated the customer facing Manage Sites view. It now includes the license key and product the license is for, making it easier for your customers to know which key they are working with. If you’ve modified this template, they will be overwritten by this update. If you’re using our templating methods, and want the changes, you’ll need to update your custom template in your own theme.

Retroactive Licensing Rewrite

The process for generating missing license keys has been greatly improved. Previously we ran 3 different routines depending on if you wanted to generate keys for a download, payment, or the entire store. This caused some pain points as each was slightly different and sometimes caused improper license key generation. With 3.4.8, we’ve rewritten this entire process to use the same routine in the Downloads&rarro;Tools section. By consolidating these tools into a single one, we’ve vastly improved it’s reliability.

Those are the big changes in store for this version. Here is the remainder of the changes:

  • Added Grunt tasks to the project to generate .pot and minified asset files.
  • Better clarification of error messages in API response.
  • Do not show upgrades for a download when a license key is part of a bundle.
  • Improve license activation limit label.
  • Add Tool Tips to all Settings.
  • Error message is incorrect when trying to add upgrade and renewal to the cart.
  • Removed script for unused selector in [edd_license_keys].
  • Add filter for check_item_name.
  • Custom date ranges break when crossing year boundary in reporting.
  • Lifetime licenses claim to expire today.
  • Fix undefined indexes by relying on EDD_Payment for data.
  • edd_sl_override_history_content doesn’t check if main query or in_the_loop.
  • Multiple upgrades for the same license are able to be added to the cart.
  • Translation issue in the {expiration} shortcode.
  • Improve check_item_name method.
  • edd_get_success_page_url() is deprecated.
  • Create table data even when payment record has no products.
  • Fix typo in sample theme license.
  • Clarify that renewal_link is a full HTML link, introduce renewal_url.
8 responses... add one

Hey Chris,

thanks for the update. I always struggle with translations and updates. Is it possible to contribute to language files? I would be happy to provide you with the german translations.

We would love to have translation contributions! If you’d like to contribute, send us a German PO/MO file and we’ll get it included in the next update.

Where do I find the new version of the EDD_SL_Plugin_Updater class?

Thanks Pippin, I found it in the examples directory within the plugin after updating 🙂

Thanks for updating the tool for generating missing license keys. I hope the process is faster now. I’m selling a “Themes Bundle” and have to re-generate licenses each time a new theme is released. It always takes about 30-60 minutes to generate all license keys for the newly added theme.

One feature I would really like to see is that users can activate the theme with the license key of the bundle instead of the single product. In addition only a single license key for the bundle has to be generated then instead of one for each single product in the bundle.

Advantages:
– users get 1 license key which can be used for all products in the bundle instead of 20+ different keys
– users don’t have to re-activate the license when they switch themes
– users can not make the mistake of using the wrong license key for the product
– no need to re-generate license keys every time a new theme is added to the bundle
– much cleaner in database and WordPress backend if there are not thousands of license keys generated

Could be implemented with an extra checkbox option for Bundles which allows to deactivate license generation for single products.

Does it make sense to add such feature?

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