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User guide

Moving a licence

Freeing a slot and using it somewhere else, changing domain, going from staging to live, and what to do when the old site is already gone.

A licence is not tied to a site. Site slots are a count, and a count can go down as well as up — so moving a licence from one site to another is deactivating it on the first and activating it on the second.

From a site you can still reach

  1. On the old site, go to Settings → Subset → Licence (placeholder — not final) and choose Deactivate this site (placeholder — not final).
  2. On the new site, paste the key and save.

The slot is freed the moment the first step completes, so there is no waiting period and no overlap to pay for. Deleting the plugin or deleting the whole site without deactivating leaves the slot held — which is the one mistake worth avoiding, and the next section is how to recover from it.

From a site that is already gone

A deleted site cannot deactivate itself, so the slot has to be released from our side. Until the dashboard’s site list ships, ask us with the site address and we will free it. There is no charge for this and no limit on how often you can ask.

Planned for 1.0.0

Releasing a slot yourself, from the list of activated sites in your dashboard, is what the dashboard is for. Until then it is a support request, answered by hand.

Changing domain

Changing address is a move like any other: deactivate on the old address, activate on the new one. The old record is kept rather than deleted — stamped as deactivated — so if the site ever comes back on its old address it reuses the same row rather than taking a fresh slot.

Some address changes are not a move at all, because we already treat them as one site:

  • turning HTTPS on;
  • adding or dropping www.;
  • changing the capitalisation of the host.

And one that looks small but is not: moving from example.com to example.com/blog is a move to a different install, because a subdirectory install has its own wp-admin and its own update check. See What counts as a site.

Staging to live

Nothing to move. A staging site never consumed a slot in the first place, so pointing the finished site at its real domain simply activates the real domain and takes its first slot. You can leave the staging site activated — it stays free.

The reverse is also fine: cloning production down to staging and activating there costs nothing, and does not disturb the production activation.

Rebuilding, restoring, migrating hosts

All free, as long as the address does not change. Re-activating a site that is already activated updates the existing record and cannot take a second slot, so:

  • restoring a backup,
  • reinstalling the plugin,
  • moving to a new host on the same domain,
  • or saving the key again because you were not sure it saved

are each a no-op as far as your slot count is concerned.

Handing a site to a client

The licence belongs to the account that bought it, not to the site. If you build a site for a client on your own licence and then hand it over, the clean version is: the client buys their own licence, they paste their key, and you deactivate your slot.

Pasting a new key over an old one on the same site does not need the old one deactivated first — the new licence takes a slot, and the old licence’s slot is freed when you deactivate it from your side.

What never happens during a move

A site mid-move does not break. A deactivated site keeps running the plugin it has: it stops getting updates and stops being a supported site, exactly as an expired licence does, and nothing switches off. If a move goes wrong, you have a working site and a support conversation — never a white screen.