F.A.Q.
Installation and upgrading
Licensing
- What is the licensing mechanism for Joomla extensions?
- Can I evaluate a product before I purchase?
- If my evaluation license expires or any other licensing problem arises, will my Joomla installation break?
- Can I transfer my license to another domain?
- Do I need to update my license file if I change my hosting?
- I get a licensing error when I try to use the product and I cannot understand what is wrong. What should I do?
- How to generate a license manually?
Troubleshooting
Our Joomla extensions use the standard Joomla mechanism for installation and upgrade. After you download the product archive, you must install it from the Joomla administration panel as you would install any other extension. For more information, please look in the Joomla! manual.
Note, however, that some of our products consist of more than one extension. For example, a component is often used with a plugin that handles its functionality or a module. To make it easier for you, we have created a special mechanism for installing all of the extensions from one archive.
All of our PHP-based non-GPL products(Joomla! extensions included) use the ionCube PHP Encoder for source code protection and licensing. In order to use those products you will need an appropriate version of the ionCube Loader to be installed on your hosting server.
GPL versions DOES NOT require ionCube.
If you use shared hosting, you may have the ionCube loader installed by default. If it is not installed, you have two choises. If the server configuration allows it, you may be able to install the loader by yourself. If not, you should ask the administrators of your server to do it for you.
More information on installing ionCube loaders can be found here.
In order to use one of our non-GPL extensions, you need a license file. There are two types of license files we use - evaluation and full. The evaluation license in most cases is fully-functional but for a limited time period.
Our extensions are packaged without any license file. They include a license acquiring functionality. If the product detects no license, the license acquire page is shown. It contains instructions on how to get a license.
Upgrading your product is done in two easy steps:
- Download and install the archive for the new version.
- Upgrade your license - only when necessary.
If a license upgrade is required, the license acquire page will be shown after the update is installed.
Uninstalling one of our Joomla extension products is done through the standard Joomla interface. Note, however, that most of our products consist of more than one Joomla extension. Even when you install a product from a single archive it may internally install multiple extensions. We have created a special mechanism to allow this in order to ease your installation process. When uninstalling such product you must uninstall the main component of the product. Doing this will remove all related plug-ins, modules and components as well.
Note that, even when you uninstall the product in the way that was described, some files may not be removed. There are some common files that we use in a number of our products and there is no reliable way to know if they are used by another product or not. These files are located in folder "joomla_root/administrator/com_es_joomla_common". If you are sure you do not use any of our products, you may remove this folder.
Almost all of our extensions come at two editions - GPL(or Unlimited Domains) and non-GPL(Single Domain).
The GPL editions comply to the GPL license. You get the source code, there is no encryption and you can use the extensions on any number of domains. When you purchase a GPL product you will get a download link for the full source code of the product.
The non-GPL editions of our extesnions are licensed to a domain. They are also used for product evaluation. You can get a free evaluation license for any domain for a limited period of time. Only one evaluaton license is issued per domain for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, if you need more time to evaluate the product, we would probably not refuse to issue another evaluation license for you, after you contact us.
When you purchase a non-GPL edition you will receive a purchase key. You can use this key to get a full license. The purchase key can only be used on a limited number of domains(usually only one) so you should only use it from the hosting server where your website will reside and not from test servers.
Note, however, that the license files we generate are also locked to IP address of your server. This does not mean you are stuck with a hosting provider. You can always get a new license if you change your hosting or IP address.
Yes.
We strongly encourage you to evaluate our products before you purchase. This way you can be sure you pay for what you really want. We try to describe our products as good as possible, but it is always better to see them in action.
In order to evaluate one of our products you will have to download its "Single Domain" edition. Those editions are downloaded freely. They are licensed per domain and you will need to generate an evaluation license for your domain. This is very easy - there is an automated procedure that leads you once you install the product package in Joomla.
No. We consider this a very important aspect and we have created our extensions fail-safe. This means that if something bad happens, they would probably not work, but the Joomla back-end and front-end will not break. As for the front-end, however, this is true unless it does not depend directly on our extensions to render.
If you encounter such behavior that breaks your Joomla installation or has any other undesired effect, please report it, it is a bug.
No. The reason for that is very simple - there is no reliable mechanism to ensure that you do not use the product on the domain that was originally licensed.
If you think you have a special case that is eligible for allowing additional domain, please contact us. We always try to resolve such issues, especially if our client’s problems are caused by a third party.
Only if you change your IP address.
Read carefully the error message. It should give you some suggestions. If there is no such message or you already tried to do what it suggests, you can submit your license file for investigation. Usually, the error message will tell you where your license file is located. It often resides in your root Joomla folder. Send us this file in an e-mail and paste the error that you get.
Don't forget to mention:
- the product you are using
- the version of the product you have installed
- the IP address of your site
- your domain
- your PHP version
- anything else you think is relevant
Although we recommend using the automated procedure which is integrated in each of our products, we have created a fallback manual license generation mechanism. You can reach it from here.
Don't worry - this is not actually a "frequently" asked question. Such thing should never happen when using our extensions but still, it is good to know what to do if it happens. The reason for a broken Joomla could only be a plug-in. All other types of extensions might break Joomla when displayed, but would not stop you from disabling them. This is not the case with plug-ins - they are loaded on every page and if they are broken it is possible that they break every page, including the extension management pages. You can disable a plug-in manually by invoking a query on the database.
UPDATE 'database_name'.'jos_plugins' SET 'published' = '0' WHERE 'jos_plugins'.'id' = [id_of_plugin] LIMIT 1;
or
UPDATE 'database_name'.'jos_plugins' SET 'published' = '0' WHERE 'jos_plugins'.'element' = '[name_of_plugin]' LIMIT 1;
The name of the plugin is the name of its main PHP file. You could look for the name of the plugin you need in the plugins folder of your Joomla installation.
To be sure your query succeeded you must check how many rows were affected by your query. How to do this depends on the SQL client you are using. It is always a good idea to create a backup of your database before executing such queries.