[Resolved] Cannot Activate License Key

[Umair]

I get this error when i try to update the license key “403 Forbidden. Your server is not able to communicate with generatepress.com in order to activate your license key.” I have other websites on the same server using GP and i don’t have issues updating license key for them.

What’s different for this site is that I downloaded beta theme and uploaded it manually. For all other sites GP non-beta version is used and downloaded directly from WordPress themes.

I have already contacted my hosting provider (Dream host) and they confirmed that there is no issue on their side. Since, i have activated the license on my other sites, the problem doesn’t seem to lie at the hosting end.

[Elvin]

Hi there,

I’ve tried replicating this on my sandbox site and I didn’t encounter the same issue.

Used the ff files:
gp-premium-2.1.0-alpha.3.zip
generatepress-3.1.0-alpha.2.zip

I’ve downloaded the files from the official source – https://generatepress.com/account

And the license key input worked as expected.

Have you tried adding the license key with ALL plugins except GP Premium disabled?

[Umair]

I downloaded the active versions on another new site. When i tried to activate the license I got this error https://imgur.com/a/gw88qi2.

I don’t know where the problem lies now is it at your end or my end?

[Elvin]

If it works on all of your site except 1, then the issue is likely on that 1 site.

Critical errors have something to do w/ the codes. Perhaps the one you’re using has been corrupted or the site’s installation process has corrupted the installation.

I downloaded the active versions on another new site.

Not exactly sure what you mean by this but if you’ve taken the plugin files from another source, it can cause issues.

You should use the official files to avoid this.

[Umair]

Ok i will clarify again. Prior to raising this ticket all my old websites are working fine. I have encountered this license activation issue with my new websites.

New Website #1:
Downloaded beta versions (theme + GP premium plugin) from https://generatepress.com/account and uploaded manually. Encountered license activation error as described in my first post.

New Website #2:
I have another new domain with fresh WordPress Installation. I downloaded GeneratePress theme from the WordPress themes and installed. Then i downloaded GP Premium gp-premium-2.0.3 from https://generatepress.com/account and uploaded manually. I encountered the license activation error as described in my 2nd post.

[Elvin]

Going back to the 403 error.

This is pretty tricky to deal with as this one can be an issue with the connection between the host your site currently uses and our server.

That said, can you ask your hosting for your server IP and a traceroute of the cURL connection to generatepress.com? This will give us the necessary information to see where the breakdown in communication is happening.

Let us know.

But as for critical errors: (this is a different issue w/ 403 error, if you’re still getting one)
This is really site-specific. Usually from corrupted files or mistakes in code snippets.

[Umair]

I am copying the reply from my hosting support in the “Private Information”.

In short your side needs to do the below:

“I would advise the team at generatepress.com to whitelist requests from
crossbow.dreamhost.com, which is the shared server both sites are hosted
on in this case.”

[Tom]

Hi there,

I just spent an hour on chat with Kinsta (our hosting company).

They checked their logs going back 3 days for any blocked requests coming from that server or your IP address and they didn’t find anything, unfortunately.

I also checked out Cloudflare logs and didn’t find anything.

That suggests that the request is never actually making its way to our server. My only guess is there’s some sort of outgoing firewall with Dreamhost (we’ve had this issue with them before) preventing the request from actually reaching our server.

I did ask Kinsta if they could add that server to an allow list, but doing so goes against their policy as it can leave their server vulnerable to attacks.

The PHP error you’re seeing is due to GPP not knowing how to handle the 403 error response. It’s fixed in 2.1.0 (which is currently in alpha).

I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful here – there wasn’t much more I could ask of Kinsta. They even had a systems admin look through the traceroute you provided and look into the logs with no luck.

If Dreamhost has any other ideas/suggestions I’d be happy to take a look.

[Umair]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your time in resolving this issue. I have copied the reply from Dreamhost below after i forwarded them your reply. I can also confirm, i have other sites on Dreamhost that don’t have license activation issue. It’s only with these couple of sites (gps-map-updates.com and globalstartupbattle.co) that I’m facing this issue.

Thanks for writing back and providing an upate!

So sorry for the ongoing trouble with activating your Theme license. I’d
be happy to further assist.

Yeah, I’m afraid we do not enforce an outbound firewall for web services.
They might need to inquire with CloudFlare as to why the connection to
activate the theme is resulting in a 403 error at CloudFlare.

@crossbow:~# curl -I https://generatepress.com/
HTTP/2 403
date: Mon, 27 Sep 2021 06:20:58 GMT
x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
referrer-policy: same-origin
cache-control: private, max-age=0, no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate,
post-check=0, pre-check=0
expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT
server: cloudflare

I then testing ‘https://generatepress.com/’ from another shared web
server in the same data center as your web server ‘crossbow’ and got a
200-okay response:

@william-williams:~# curl -I https://generatepress.com/
HTTP/2 200
date: Mon, 27 Sep 2021 06:16:09 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
cf-ray: 69529a01abbecee0-IAD
cache-control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate
expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
link: <https://generatepress.com/&gt;; rel=shortlink
vary: Accept-Encoding
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
expect-ct: max-age=604800,
report-uri=”https://report-uri.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/beacon/expect-ct&#8221;
ki-edge: v=16.4
pragma: no-cache
x-content-type-options: nosniff
x-edge-location-klb: 1
x-kinsta-cache: HIT
x-ua-compatible: IE=edge
server: cloudflare

We can try moving all your sites to another shared web server that is
currently not blocked by their services through CloudFlare, but down the
line, your IP may get blocked by their services again and ideally it’s
not optimal to move from web server to another. GeneratePress will need
to assist with identifying what is causing the 403 errors. The curl
results above hopefully helps to identify the issue/discrepancy and if
additional tests need to be ran and/or if there is a server-side change
needed to help prevent your IP from being denied access, please do share
and we can take a further look.

[Tom]

If a server IP is banned on our end then we either:

a) don’t know the correct IP to be looking for in our logs
b) it’s being banned by Cloudflare before it ever reaches our server

I don’t think it’s b) as I’ve checked our Cloudflare logs and I’m not seeing any signs of the IP being banned.

If you want/need updates via the Dashboard, it may be worth getting them to switch you over to a server that isn’t being banned. If it happens again in the future we can try again to find the culprit.

Sorry for the hassle here – not sure what else we can do on our end without a different IP to check, unfortunately.

[Umair]

Hey Tom,

I have copied the IP addresses in private information. Please let me know if any of these are blocked at your end. Thanks.

[Tom]

Hi there,

That IP was blocked due to 24 failed logins in 60 minutes. They just unblocked it – let me know if it works now 🙂

[Umair]

Yes its activated now. Thanks for the help

[Tom]

No problem!

[Mario]

Hi there!

I’m getting the same error after trying to activate my license key. It is the ‘403 Forbidden. Your server…’. What information do you need to help me out with this? it seems my server cannot connect with generatepress properly and I’m totally lost with this one.

I already tried to deactivate every other plugin but I’m getting the same error all over again.

Thank you very much in advance.
Mario

[Author]

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