Warning about license out of installs, due to aliased domains?

[Victor Levy]

My official site has a .net domain, but I have registered the .com, .info, etc. domains as well, and I have my registrar configured to forward visits to the alternate domains over to the .net domain. I have the business license with three domains, and I only ever serve pages from the main site and a staging site; the third license key is not used.

Frequently when I enter my site’s Events/Settings page, I see a warning that I’m out of installs. If I navigate to my site’s Licenses tab and click Save Changes, everything looks better. I’m not sure any functionality is being degraded before I do this, but since it is unnerving, I wonder how to prevent it. When I visit the License Keys page at The Events Calendar, I see that all three license keys are being used, and there is always one or more of the alternate domains shown, even though these alternate domains are served by the same server as the .net domain. I select “Disconnect Now” on the site URL for the alternate domain(s).

Can the license system be made smart enough to realize that any visits to mysite.com or mysite.org are the same server and therefore should not use another license key? If not, Is there any downside to my current situation, since my site’s events calendar seems to be working fine?

Thanks!

[Courtney]

Hi Victor

I see your license active at
staging.pianyc.net
pianyc.net
pianyc.info

The .net & .info domains are counted separately by our license system. The only risk you run really is if you need to use the license on yet another site beyond this, like a .com variation or an entirely other site. At that time, an upgrade would be needed.

Is there anything else I can help you with?

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Victor Levy]

Thanks Courtney, I have not configured my license key to be active on pianyc.info. I have only ever configured it to be active on pianyc.net and staging.pianyc.net. But I have frequently removed the third license from the license management page. Is the third license being automatically assigned as users navigate to pianyc.info or one of the other aliased sites? I am hoping that by finding out how the third license is being assigned, I can stop it from happening, and also stop the large image of the capybara with the message that my license if out of installs when in fact it means only that I have used all of the installs included in my license.

Best regards, Vic

[Courtney]

Hi Victor

I am curious – how did you set up the .info site initially? Was it a direct copy of the .net site? If so, or if you have any synchronizing happening, I would expect that to cause the license to be applied.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Victor Levy]

Thanks Courtney, the .info site does not really exist. The only sites that exist are mysite.net and, occasionally, staging.mysite.net. The way the .info site appears to exist is that I registered the .info domain with GoDaddy, and I have set up my ‘A’ DNS record on the .info site to forward hits automatically to the .net site. This is also true of .com and .org. My intention was for hits on the alternate domains to redirect properly to the official site at .net. But instead, what is happening is that browsers are retaining the .info domain, and this is even when clicking around in my site!

I can see that Google is indexing the alternate domains, and users are clicking on the alternate sites via Google searches for the events my site hosts. I am reluctant to stop the forwarding, due to the Google indexing (users clicking on Google hits on the alternate sites will be landing on a 404), but I will discontinue it if this is messing up my ECP licensing.

[Courtney]

Hi Victor

Based upon your configuration, I don’t believe there is much we can do on our license server side to resolve this. However, not having the license in your site will not affect the plugin’s functionality other than updates.

Please let me know if you find a working solution to this.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Victor Levy]

Every event-related admin page on my main site now says my license key is invalid (picture of a capybara), but when I log in to my license maintenance page on theeventscalendar.com, I see that I have a valid license for my real size, pianyc.net.

“It looks like you’re using The Events Calendar PRO, but the license key is invalid. Please download the latest version from your account. You can always check the status of your licenses by logging in to your account on theeventscalendar.com.”

Can you please let me know what impact this condition has on my ability to create events or on my users’ ability to use my site? Can I ignore this warning? Up to now, when I have seen the capybara warning I have been going to Events/Settings/Licenses/Save Changes, which always makes the warning go away.

Thank you.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by Victor Levy.

[Courtney]

Hi Victor

Can we try the simple way to troubleshoot this first? Go to Events » Settings » Licenses and remove your Events Calendar Pro license and save. Then add it back and save again to activate.

Also, the System Info that was shared when this thread started may be out of date by now. Can you confirm that you’ve run all available updates in your site?

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Victor Levy]

Hi Courtney,

The troubleshooting steps you are recommending, when I have done them previously, always cause the warning to disappear. Still, I would have followed them except that when I logged in just now the warning had already disappeared. So I will have to reply in the future when the warning appears again. At that time I’ll also upload my latest system info.

Thanks, Vic

[Courtney]

Thanks Victor. I look forward to resolving this with you.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

[Victor Levy]

I believe I have found a solution to this problem, from this link at Stackoverflow and this link at Bitnami . (I use a Bitnami WordPress instance and so I had to adapt the Stackoverflow advice to use with Bitnami.) On the Bitnami page, you have to look for the section titled, “How to access my application from only one domain?” Even then, just copying and pasting did not work; my solution is my own adaptation.

How to redirect other domains to https://www.mysite.net

Bitnami does not use Apache’s .htaccess file. To edit the file doing redirection, run this command to edit the correct configuration file:
sudo vi /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/bitnami.conf

Above the bottom of the section under “<VirtualHost _default_:443>” add the following text. What this does is establish a rule saying, “for any page request that does not start with http://www.mysite.net, redirect to the identical page at https://www.mysite.net and tell the browsers (and Google) that this is a permanent relocation.”

  # Redirect to https://www.mysite.net
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.mysite\.net$
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mysite.net$1 [R=permanent,L]

The above redirects any page requests not under http://www.mysite.net, for example:
https://mysite.info/event/my-event/

to:
https://www.mysite.net/event/my-event/

After editing bitnami.conf, restart apache:
sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache;

Now I hope to see the end of out-of-install warnings, and also that Google will correctly index only the .net domain. I hope this reply will help other Events Calendar users in the same situation.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by Victor Levy. Reason: Typo and formatting

[Courtney]

Thank you Victor! That is a very unique solution, but I’m sure logging it here may help others.

Do let us know if you need any other support.

Thanks
Courtney 🙂

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