Activating your licence key unlocks the Pro features of the FotoGrids plugin on a specific WordPress site. The activation is a one-time step per site — once it succeeds, the key is stored locally and Pro features turn on immediately.
Before you start, make sure both the Free plugin (FotoGrids) and the Pro plugin (FotoGrids Pro) are installed and activated in WordPress. Pro requires Free to be present — activating Pro without Free will not produce a working installation. See Installing FotoGrids Pro for the install procedure.
Location FotoGrids → License
Where to find your licence key #
Your licence key was emailed to you after purchase and is permanently available in your customer account at fotogrids.com/account. It is a long alphanumeric string starting with sk_ followed by several groups of characters.
If you have lost the email and cannot sign in to your account, contact support with the email address you used at checkout — the key can be re-sent.
Your licence key is the credential that activates Pro on your sites. Treat it like a password — anyone with the key could use one of your activation slots.
Activation steps #
- In wp-admin, go to FotoGrids → License.
- Paste your licence key into the key field.
- Click Agree & Activate License.
The plugin contacts the licence server, validates the key, consumes one activation slot, and stores the licence record locally. Pro features turn on immediately.
What happens after activation #
Three things change immediately:
- Pro features unlock across every Gallery and Album on the site. No page reload of public pages is needed — the next request will see Pro features.
- The License page shows your active licence status, including when the next renewal check will happen and an option to deactivate the licence from this site.
- Pro feature updates become available. Updates are delivered through the normal WordPress plugin updates screen, exactly like Free updates.
The licence record stays valid on the site even when the server is briefly unreachable — FotoGrids only re-checks the key on a schedule, so a temporary outage at fotogrids.com does not cause your Pro features to disappear.
Errors during activation #
The most common activation errors fall into three categories.
“License key invalid”
The string entered does not match any licence on file. Three things to check before contacting support: that the full key was pasted (it is long enough to be easy to truncate by accident), that no leading or trailing whitespace was copied along with it, and that the key has not been entered into another product’s activation field by mistake — FotoGrids keys start with sk_ followed by an alphanumeric body.
“No activations remaining”
The licence has reached its site limit. Two options to recover: deactivate the licence on a site that no longer needs Pro (see Transferring a License to a New Domain), or upgrade your plan to a tier with more activations from your account at fotogrids.com/account.
“Could not connect to licensing server”
The site could not reach fotogrids.com at all. The most common causes are a temporary network or DNS issue, a security plugin or hosting firewall blocking outbound HTTPS requests, or an outbound proxy that requires whitelisting. Retry after a minute. If the problem persists, ask your host to allow outbound HTTPS to *.fotogrids.com from the site’s PHP process and try again.
Activation is the only step where the site must be able to reach fotogrids.com. After activation, public visitor pages do not contact fotogrids.com at all — Pro features run entirely on your server.
Deactivating a licence on a site #
If you need to free an activation slot — for example because you are moving Pro to a different site, or retiring an old site — deactivate the licence first rather than just deleting the plugin.
- In wp-admin, go to FotoGrids → License.
- Click Deactivate License.
- Confirm the deactivation.
The slot is released immediately and is available to be used on another site. The Pro plugin itself remains installed and can be re-activated later by re-entering the key. See Transferring a License to a New Domain for the full transfer procedure.
Tips #
If you administer multiple sites with the same licence — for example a staging site and a production site — activate Pro on each one independently. Each consumes one activation slot. The activation cannot be shared between sites by copying the WordPress database.
For development and staging copies, the recommended pattern is to deactivate the licence on the staging site before pushing the database to production, then re-activate on production. This keeps your slot count accurate and avoids two sites both claiming the same activation.
