OwlDraft → Licence. One key, activated against one address.
What activation unlocks
Plugin updates, demo imports, and the support desk.
That is the whole list. The publication itself is never gated: members, the paywall, the newsletter, checkout, analytics and everything you have published keep working whatever this screen says. An expired licence never takes a site down, and it never takes your data.
Before a key has ever been confirmed, the OwlDraft admin screens are blurred — a sign on a door rather than a lock, and it lifts the moment any real key is entered. The Licence screen itself is never covered, because it is the way out.
The two cards
The screen draws the licence and this site’s activation separately, because they are separate things. A key can be perfectly valid while this particular install is not activated on it — which is exactly what a site restored from staging looks like.
The licence card shows the plan, its state (active, on trial, cancelled, expired, paused, payment failed), when it renews, and every site currently using it with a Detach beside each.
Moving a site
Copied a site, changed a domain, or spent every activation:
- Open OwlDraft → Licence on the new site.
- Detach the address you no longer use, from the list of active sites.
- Activate this site.
Two clicks, no ticket, and at no point are you asked to re-type a key you have already given us. Staging and local copies of a site you have already licensed do not count against your total.
When the licence server cannot be reached
Nothing changes. A timeout, a 502 or a page of HTML from somebody’s captive portal is not an answer, and nothing that is not an answer is allowed to move the gate. Only a server that replied and said no is a no.
A licence that is already past its expiry date and cannot be checked is given a fortnight in your favour before anything happens — because a renewal that has just gone through looks exactly like this.
The check runs once a day, and never on a front-end page load.
Updates
The plugin is not on WordPress.org, so updates come from us:
- a new version appears under Plugins and Dashboard → Updates as usual
- View details shows the changelog for exactly the version being offered
- the answer is cached for three days, and Check for updates — a link on the plugin’s own row — asks again immediately. Use it the moment after you renew.
Installing an update requires an activated licence. Everything else about the site carries on regardless; only the download is refused, with a link to the screen that fixes it.
An unreachable update server never removes something the site already had: a site that cannot be told about 1.3.0 keeps running 1.2.0 and nobody is hurt.
Pointing a staging copy elsewhere
define( 'OWLDRAFT_UPDATE_API', 'https://api.example.com/publisher' );
A constant rather than a setting, deliberately: changing where a site gets its code from should need filesystem access, not an administrator account.
If it will not activate
| What it says | What happened |
|---|---|
| This licence belongs to a different address | The site was copied, or the domain changed. Detach the old address, then activate again. |
| Every activation is in use | Detach a site you no longer update. It keeps everything it has published. |
| This licence has expired | The subscription lapsed. Renew from the same screen — the key does not change. |
| This licence has been disabled | Disabled at the source. Contact support. |
| The licence server would not accept this key | The key is not one we issued, or it has been replaced. Your receipt email has the current one. |
Next: importing a demo.