License Activation... for real ... with PHP

As mentioned in a previous article, "License Activation... for real," we recently put license activation in place for our users. The focus of the previous article was to show that despite our own complicated setup that involves using several different machines for license distribution, it doesn't have to be difficult to use. Learning from industry mistakes, we've seen that hiding complexity helps to make our customers more successful and results in less hassle for everyone.

As I mentioned previously, our setup includes a PHP web server. This particular machine drives our support portal, letting users download applications, etc. (There's nothing special about this, as it's the backbone of any modern software company who needs to offer different solutions to different customers.) We've now added a new field on the main page called "Licenses." This particular field shows the order id activation numbers that our users need to be able to activate their product and get started using the application.



The above screenshot shows what a typical customer sees. As you can see, there's not much to license activation, because most details are completely hidden. This flexibility allows you to match your users requirements and needs.

On the back-end we have more details, which lets us get a quick overview of orders and related information whenever someone requests support.



This PHP support is available in the current version of License Distribution Service, and currently works with PHP 5. It has been developed as a library that lets you connect to a License Distribution Service setup and poll and post information. This makes it efficient to connect License Distribution Service to business websites and portals such as our own.

You can see an example here: License Distribution Service - Example in PHP