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Fix For: Your Local “Offline” License Key Is Invalid

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by

Admin
in

If your website is seeing the following error message:

Your Local “Offline” License Key Is Invalid
 

The program has been halted because it is not possible to validate your license.

The program uses a Local “Offline”
License Key to validate your license when the main licensing servers
are unreachable. (ie: When you do not have an internet connection.)

You are receiving this error because of the following reasons:

  1. The program was unable to contact the licensing servers to validate your license.
  2. Your Local “Offline” License Key is invalid.

If this problem continues, please contact support for assistance.

it’s because you’re using Snippet Master (a third-party content editing tool for websites) and your license for Snippet Master is not functioning any more. The most common reason for this is because the original creator of this tool, Henri Straforelli, sold the original version of the tool to someone else. The person he sold it to no longer maintains the tool, and Henri tells me that the licensing server (a computer that processes the licences) is not working. Henri has continually contacted them, but they haven’t replied.

The good news is that Henri maintains a new version of Snippet Master, however, you will have to move your website over to his hosting company to get it working. If you feel this is what you want then please contact them.

Henri’s default response to requests about the failing Snippet Master licence is:

Hello, I’m very sorry, but the Snippetmaster software was sold two years ago, and the new owner seems to have shut down the license server. (I’ve tried to contact them, but have not been successful.)

The good news is that I have an active Snippetmaster license server that I host myself through my hosting company. The bad news is that only customers who are hosting their website on one of our hosting servers are able to access the license server. (The license server is located inside our network of servers so it is not accessible to websites hosted with another company.)

So… the only solution to get Snippetmaster working for you again would be to switch your website hosting to my company. If you want to do that, I can give you a 50% discount on any of our plans:

http://www.etwebhosting.com/linux

Use the discount code “SNIPPETMASTER25” when signing up, and then send me a message and I’ll have my technicians work with you to get your website quickly transferred over to our servers. (There will be no downtime or interruption of service and no changes needed for your website, etc. Moving to our hosting service is very quick and easy.)

Once your website is located on our network of servers, then Snippetmaster will start working for you again.

Sincerely,

Henri Straforelli

Note: I have no affiliation with Henri, so you take his offer at your own risk.

Update (An Alternative Fix)

Someone in the SnippetMaster forum asked me if it was possible to keep using SnippetMaster without moving their website to Henri’s hosting company. Someone had already posted in the forum about renaming a file called db.inc.php

Note that this method, will only work with the Lite version of SnippetMaster; if you are using the Pro version and implement this method, then it will be downgraded to the Pro version. If you are using the Lite version, then there’s no issue.

Here are the steps to do fix the problem:

  1. Find a folder called snippet-db/ that resides inside the folder called snippetmaster/
  2. Change the permissions of the snippet-db/ folder, so it’s writable (i.e. chmod 777)
  3. Use FTP or remote login, and ensure you’re inside the folder called snippetmaster/
  4. Rename the db.inc.php-original file to db.inc.php
  5. Copy the file db.inc.php to db.inc.php-original (so we end up back with the original version of the file as backup, incase we need the original again in the future)
  6. Change the permissions of the file db.inc.php so that it’s writable (i.e. chmod 777 or chmod 666)

Let me know how you get on in the comments, or contact me.

Update: On the SnippetMaster forum, a user called Yellowduck, thought the file rename fix didn’t work, however, it does seem to after all, but you need to change the URL you normally use:

It was a false alarm – it is working. Instead of typing www.mywebaddress.com/cms into the address bar, I have to type: www.myaddress.com/snippetmaster and it works!