You own your website, right? Of course you do. That’s a silly question, but what if it isn’t? What if you don’t really own all of your website because you don’t own all of its licenses?
Consider this: did you hire a freelancer or agency to help set up and configure parts of the website? Did they say to you, “We need to buy these extensions to achieve your hopes and dreams. We have this covered.”? If this sounds familiar, this blog post may be for you.
In the past, I have talked about and emphasized the importance of applying website licenses. I have also talked about what can happen if you do not update extensions due to not having a license set. My fellow developer and support team member, Russell, has also gone into great detail discussing why you want licenses as a whole. Today, I want to emphasize being the owner of the licenses.
Who owns the license?
The biggest reason to be the owner of the license and have your account tied to it is because you know where you are. You know how to contact you.
This may sound silly, but have you ever had trouble contacting people for information? People can go “missing.” They stop responding completely, or take weeks at a time to get back to you. Or, what if a relationship went sour and you are no longer on good terms with your former freelancer or agency? You will not have much luck getting anything out of them.
Of course, we hope neither of these situations are true for you, but there is no denying both are possible.
Handling licenses you do not own
So at this point, you know you have some licenses in place on your site. You also know that you do not own some or all. What do you do now? The first step would be visiting the website that sells and supports the extensions. From there you can create your own account. You may need to buy the product again, even if you only need the license, but by doing so this will execute the proper actions to make you a full customer and able to return with ease later.
Saving the new licenses
Once you have your own account and have acquired the licenses, you will want to switch the old for the new. You will want to log in to your website and check settings pages for the extension in question. Some settings may not be as obvious as others. Looking for wording such as “extensions” or “licenses” is a good start. When you find the correct spots, you may have the ability to deactivate the current license. Deactivating the license will disassociate it with the current website. This tells the extension’s developer website to break that connection. If there is no such deactivation option, then you only have to replace the current value and save.
You own this!
Congratulations. You have now ensured that you are the owner of as much of your website as you can be. It feels good and is a big weight of grief off of your chest. If you would like help with any of the steps mentioned above, sign up with Maintainn (Premium+ Support plan or higher) or purchase a few Bulk Hours and we will be happy to assist you further.
