Mandatory Purchase key validation for installing the wordpress theme

As I understand theme continue to work properly without this “activation”, and nothing changes.

Could you share a theme which does this? I have never come across the theme essentially stopping working without doing this and would be really keen to see it in action.

Do you know if this prevents the whole theme working or just aspects like auto updates etc? (That I have seen but it is voluntary and does not prevent the theme itself working).

Do you know how it knows if the purchase code is legit? Via API to envato? How does that work without at least some degree of personal info or connection involved?

How does it know 3 days are up? Either it has to be tracking it somehow or it is a feature written into the theme which could in theory therefore be removed by someone who knows enough about what they are doing?

Thank you for explaining

I am totally on board with @lumbermandesigns on this. Guys, just take a look at game industry, they’ve been fighting piracy for years and achieved nothing. Many of those hi-tech DRM solutions only alienated honest customers. In some extreme cases people rather download pirated version BECAUSE the original version has some stupid DRM which only bullies buyers.

Activation based on some Envato API is IMHO a bad idea. Have we forgotten about some serious connectivity issues Envato had during last year? Do we really need new type of “cannot install/activate the theme” threads? Why to complicate things for paying customers?

I am not saying that we shouldn’t care about piracy at all, I can definitely imagine some minor improvements which could be done on marketplace (for example restricting item comments for non-buyers to show only last 10 comments or something like that), but I am against any form of DRM in items. Unless it will be done in some revolutionary way with zero obstacles for our paying customers.

Until then, I will fight the piracy by creating awesome and useful items and providing a great support.

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Right @LSVRthemes, I am right now at the same side where @lumbermandesigns is. and this is how everyone else is fighting with piracy. When authors are new they used to send DMCA and by the time passes and this piracy doesnt end every that author decide to remain silent and just produce the good work. This is the story with every other author here.

But that doesnt mean we should not discuss or plan this in any way to stop this, or atleast lower this by any percentage. Not sure where this thing will go but surely I am going to do something in this area myself, people are most welcome to discuss this with me or even envato can help us making this in a way we could do something in this direction.

Dear theemon,

as long as yu can’t crypt your theme files, you’ll lose the race.

If you crypt your files -> can’t sell here and also nobody will buy them.

Think about that :wink:

Am interested to build a theme. So, what’s the current best solution to prevent piracy?

Hi guys,

I also tried to build something like you’ve been discussing here.

I don’t aim at making it super fancy:

It works by making the user to insert the Envato Purchase Code in there.

If you don’t have Purchase Code:

  • No longer receive updates and support from our Forums

The problems I’ve faced:

  1. There’s no test mode for Envato API. I can’t test my code without an item being published and approved! That’s frustrating! (maybe someone can share me a temporary token here till a release my item?)
  2. Validating the domain for the user and properly enforcing Single vs. Premium Licence
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