Staging sites, migrations and your domain

Keep your licence working when your site moves.

Your Booked licence belongs to one website address — which causes no trouble until that address changes. Here is what the lock actually is, what a broken licence looks like from the outside, and the order to do things in so your booking form never goes dark.

What your licence is locked to

The first time a key is activated, Booked ties it to that site's bare domain. The www. at the front is ignored, so www.bramhallpharmacy.co.uk and bramhallpharmacy.co.uk are the same site. Everything else is a different site — staging.bramhallpharmacy.co.uk, bramhall-pharmacy.co.uk, and the temporary address your host gives you before the real domain is pointed at it.

There is a quieter second part. Each time Booked checks in, it is handed a signed permission good for 14 days. The site checks in once a day in the background, and again whenever somebody opens the WordPress admin, and each success renews the fortnight. That carries you through a brief outage — and it also means a site that cannot reach Booked for two weeks switches itself off, with nothing cancelled and nothing changed at your end.

• 1Status — this has to read Active. Payment overdue and Cancelled stop Booked equally dead, but they are billing problems, not domain problems.
• 2Refresh — re-checks the licence there and then, and pulls down an add-on you have just bought. Press it after unblocking a firewall. It only appears once a key is stored.
• 3Locked to: — the one address this key runs on, and your proof after a move that the change worked. If it still shows the old domain, the move is not finished.

What breaks when the site moves

Booked does not fade out politely. On every page load it compares the address the site is served from with the address the key is locked to. The moment those two disagree — or the permission runs out — the whole Booked admin is replaced by a full-screen Activate Booked card, and the server refuses the data behind it as well. There is no grace period on a domain change: the new address is unlicensed from its first page load. On your public site the booking form renders nothing for visitors, while a logged-in administrator sees a small grey dashed hint in its place — which is why a customer usually reports this before you spot it.

• 1The gate — this card replaces the entire Booked app. Your bookings, customers and settings are untouched behind it and reappear the moment a valid key is accepted.
• 2The key box — pasting the key here and pressing Activate does the same job as the Licence tab, and only works if the key is free or already locked to this exact address.

Moving to a new domain

The order matters. The lock is held by Booked, not by your website, so re-pasting the key on the new address will not shift it. Release it from your account first.

1. Press Change domain in your Booked accountFind the licence card for the site you are moving, then enter the new website address — or leave the box empty to unlock the key so it can be activated anywhere. Leaving it blank answers "Unlocked. Activate the key on your new site to lock it there."
2. Move the site as normalFiles and database, however you or your host usually do it. The stored key travels with the database.
3. On the new address, open Booked and expect the Activate Booked screenBecause the address no longer matches the one the key was locked to, the new site is unlicensed the moment it is served — so the gate, not the Licence tab, is what you will see.
4. Paste the key and press ActivateIt is the same key from the same account. The page reloads and the Booked app comes back with everything as you left it.
5. Check Booked › Settings › Your planThe Locked to: line should now read the new address. If it still shows the old one, the move is not finished.
6. Look at your booking page while logged outA private window is enough — you are checking that customers see the form, not the grey placeholder.

• 1Locked to — the address Booked holds for this licence. Until this changes, activating on the new site cannot work.
• 2Activation key — use Copy rather than selecting it by hand; a key one character short gives "That licence token was not recognised."
• 3Change domain — moves the lock, or unlocks it if you leave the box blank. Rotate key beside it issues a new key and stops the old one at once, so keep that for a key that has been shared where it should not have been.

Staging sites and test copies

A key runs one site, and that single fact causes most of the trouble here. It arrives in two shapes.

The first is a new site activated too early. Switch Booked on while the site is still at your host's temporary address and the key locks itself there, so when the real domain goes live you meet "This licence is already in use on …". Wait until the proper domain is serving the site before you activate; if it has already happened, put it right with Change domain rather than by pasting the key again.

The second is a staging copy. A clone carries a copy of the stored key and of the signed permission, but not the address they belong to — so staging is unlicensed from its first page load. The Booked admin there shows the Activate Booked card and the booking form on the staging site is empty. That is expected, not a fault — and the thing not to do is activate your live key there, which takes the lock off the site your customers use.

• Keep the licence on the site that takes real bookings, and treat staging as unlicensed from the start.
• Your theme, your page layouts and where the shortcode sits can all be worked on in staging. Booked's own screens cannot — they sit behind the gate — so service, staff and booking-form changes have to be made on the live site.
• If you need Booked on a second address too, add a second licence from your Booked account rather than moving the key back and forth — every move leaves one site dark.

When your site cannot reach Booked

Because the permission expires after 14 days, a site walled off from the outside world eventually switches itself off — paid subscription, nothing touched. The failure is distinctive: everything worked for a fortnight, nobody changed anything, and one morning the booking form is gone.

The usual causes are a host firewall blocking outbound requests, a security plugin blocking outgoing connections, or a site on a company network with no internet access. A stopped WP-Cron makes it worse, because the daily check-in never runs — opening the WordPress admin triggers one too, which is why a site nobody logs into is most at risk.

1. Allow outbound requests to trybooked.coAsk your host, or whoever manages the firewall, to permit outgoing HTTPS to that address. Nothing needs opening inbound.
2. Check any security plugin that filters outgoing connectionsAdd the same address to its allow list.
3. Then get Booked talking againIf the site has already gone dark, you land on the Activate Booked screen: paste the key and press Activate. If it is still running, open Booked › Settings › Your plan and press Refresh, which answers "Licence active — your add-ons are unlocked." Either way the permission is renewed for another 14 days.

Changing hosts? Confirm the new one allows outbound requests before you point the domain at it. With Change domain done first, that turns a move into a quiet afternoon rather than a fortnight of surprises.