BG Product License and Update Manager for WordPress

BG Product License and Update Manager for Wordpress will be described below. It is created to register sold through Envato product support licenses, organize product support and automatic updates within validity of a license. If the author of the product has a mailing list service, dedicated to this product, the buyer can be easily subscribed to it. BG Product License and Update Manager is build as a WordPress plugin and can be used for plugin and themes authors, who sell their products through Envato.

 1. What is BG Product License and Update Manager for WordPress

Some time ago Envato began to sell not only software, but licenses for product support as well. The authors are now obliged to provide full support for their products during the period when the license is valid. Thus arose the problem to register sold licenses and organize support for customers who are entitled to receive it. If one have several hundred customers, it is very time-consuming and troublesome task.

 I developed BG Product License and Update Manager for WordPress, in order to help me and other authors to register purchased through Envato support licenses and grant buyers access to product support until the license is valid. It can helps to the Envato authors with following:

• automatic registration sold through Envato licenses for product support. Each license has a date when it expired. BG Product License and Update Manager for WordPress get this date from Envato and stores its among the other data during registration of the license by the buyer on the server.
• grants the buyers access to the product support pages, knowledge base and forum (if they exists) at the author’s website for the duration of the license.
• when the buyer  register the product, he/she automatically became the member of the authors website with chosen username and password. The role, which the new user is registered under, can be selected by the author for each product.
• if the seller has a mailing list dedicated to the product, the buyer during the product registration can automatically subscribe to it. For this it is enough to put a tick in the registration form and confirm your subscription clicking the link it the letter. At the moment, it works with mailing service MailChimps, but it can be extended to the other services any time
• if the product uses the geodata, it’s author can automatically update geodata at all of their customers with valid licenses. Each time, when update is necessary, it is enough to put a tick in the product description, and in the next days all geodata for all registered users will be updated. This significantly reduces the headache for the product author and its buyers.

BG Product License and Update Manager for WordPress is designed as a WordPress plugin. It can be installed and managed by standard WordPress plugin tools. To integrate it into developed by the author product, it is enough to unpack the archive and add to the products head module few lines of text, as it is described below.

2. Data that BG Product License and Update Manager for WordPress saves for each license

Each author can register licenses and grant buyers access to the support of multiple products at the same time. Products are as custom types of WordPress data and are operated by the regular WordPress tools. We’ll see below how to create and edit products.

For each license following information is saved:

• login under which the buyer can visit authors site to get support and access to knowledge base and forum.
• password to log in to support site.
• e-mail, through which the buyer receives the messages from the author of the product, and if the buyer register to receive products newsletter, the newsletter. The email address can not be repeated, therefore, if the same buyer has registered a number of different products or the same product for several sites, the login, password and e-mail address must be the same.
• site for which the product is registered.
• the date when the license expires. The data obtained from Envato using the product purchase code.
• internal information required for the service operation.

Described the main purpose and basic functions of the plugin BG Product License and Update Manager for WordPress. In the following articles will be given instructions and recommendations for the installation of the product and its usage.