What Happens When a SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base Licence Becomes Inactive?

SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base needs an active Monthly or Yearly licence to keep the public knowledge base and protected plugin features available.

If the licence becomes inactive, your articles and settings are not deleted, but parts of the plugin may stop working until the licence is active again.

Why might a licence become inactive?

A licence can become inactive for several reasons, including:

• A Monthly or Yearly subscription was cancelled
• A renewal payment failed
• A payment card expired
• The subscription reached the end of its paid period
• The product key was replaced
• The licence was removed from the website
• The saved licence details are no longer valid
• The website cannot confirm the licence status

The Licence page should normally show the current status and any message returned during the latest check.

What happens in the WordPress dashboard?

When SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base cannot confirm an active licence, access to protected plugin screens may be restricted.

This can affect:

• All Articles
• Add Article
• Categories
• Analytics
• Settings
• Protected knowledge base tools

Selecting one of these areas may redirect you to the licence activation screen.

This prevents the protected plugin features from continuing to run without an eligible subscription.

Are my articles deleted?

No. Your knowledge base articles are not normally deleted when the licence becomes inactive.

They remain stored in the WordPress database along with:

• Categories
• Article excerpts
• Featured images
• Category icons and images
• Plugin settings
• Design settings
• Search analytics
• Article view totals
• Helpful voting totals

Once the licence is active again, your existing content and settings should become available without having to recreate them.

What happens to the public knowledge base?

The main knowledge base page may stop displaying the normal homepage layout.

Instead, visitors may see a temporary message explaining that the knowledge base is unavailable.

Individual article and category pages may also become unavailable until the licence is restored.

This means visitors may no longer be able to:

• Search the knowledge base
• Browse categories
• Read articles
• Use article navigation
• Submit helpful votes
• View recommended or related content

For a business using the plugin for customer support or product documentation, this can leave visitors without access to important help information.

What happens to knowledge base search?

Live knowledge base search requires an active licence.

If the licence becomes inactive:

• Search requests may be blocked
• Results may stop appearing
• Search analytics may stop recording
• No-result searches may no longer be saved

Search should begin working again once the licence is active and the public knowledge base is available.

What happens to helpful voting?

The “Was this article helpful?” feature also depends on an active licence.

When the licence is inactive:

• Visitors cannot submit new Yes or No votes
• New feedback is not recorded
• Existing feedback totals remain stored
• The Analytics screen may be unavailable

Your previous voting results should still be there after reactivation.

What happens to article view tracking?

New article views may stop being recorded while the licence is inactive.

Existing view totals are not normally deleted.

Once the licence is restored, article view tracking can continue from the saved totals.

This also means the Popular Articles section may not update while the knowledge base is unavailable.

What happens to analytics?

The Analytics screen is a protected part of SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base.

If the licence becomes inactive, you may temporarily lose access to:

• Article Feedback
• Search Analytics
• Article Views

The stored analytics information remains in the WordPress database.

After reactivation, the previous totals should become visible again.

What happens to SEO?

When knowledge base content is unavailable because the licence is inactive, SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base may add noindex and nofollow instructions to those pages.

This tells search engines not to index the temporary unavailable version of the page or follow links from it.

The plugin does this to avoid search engines treating the unavailable message as the normal article content.

Once the licence is active again, the normal knowledge base SEO output can return.

Will search rankings be affected?

A brief licence interruption may not cause an immediate problem, especially if it is fixed quickly.

However, leaving articles unavailable for a longer period can affect:

• Search engine crawling
• Indexed knowledge base pages
• Visitor experience
• Links from other websites
• Customer trust

If your documentation is important for search traffic or customer support, restore the licence as soon as possible.

What happens to the shortcode?

The main knowledge base shortcode is:

Without an active licence, the shortcode may display a temporary unavailable message instead of the normal knowledge base homepage.

The shortcode is still present on the WordPress page, so you do not need to add it again after reactivation.

Once the licence is active, the normal homepage should return automatically.

What do visitors see on article and category URLs?

Visitors opening an article or category may see a temporary unavailable page instead of the content.

The original article or category has not been removed.

Its content is still stored in WordPress, but SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base will not display the protected template until the licence has been restored.

Does the WordPress page disappear?

No. The normal WordPress page containing the knowledge base shortcode remains published.

The page title, URL and WordPress page record are not removed.

Only the SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base output inside the page is affected.

Does an inactive licence cancel the subscription?

No. The licence status shown in WordPress reflects the subscription information returned during the check.

If a payment failed or the subscription was cancelled, you will need to fix that separately through the account or payment method used for the purchase.

Re-entering the product key will not reactivate a cancelled or unpaid subscription by itself.

How to restore an inactive licence

Start by opening:

Knowledge Base > Licence

Check the message shown on the page.

Then:

1. Confirm that the Monthly or Yearly subscription is still active.
2. Check that the latest payment completed successfully.
3. Make sure the saved purchase email is correct.
4. Find the original SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base product key.
5. Enter the email and product key again if the activation form is shown.
6. Select Activate Licence.
7. Clear your website cache.
8. Test the public knowledge base.

If the subscription has expired or been cancelled, it must be reactivated before the product key can pass the licence check.

The subscription is active but WordPress says it is inactive

If you believe the subscription is active, check the following:

• The purchase email matches the subscription
• The complete product key has been entered
• The key belongs to SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base
• The website can connect to SoftwareRoad
• Outgoing HTTPS requests are not blocked
• The website was not restored from an old backup
• The licence was not removed during a website migration
• The product key has not been replaced

Try entering the licence details again.

If the error remains, contact SoftwareRoad support with:

• The purchase email address
• The website address
• The exact error message
• The approximate time the problem started

Do not include the complete product key in a public message.

The knowledge base is still unavailable after reactivation

After a successful activation:

1. Refresh the WordPress dashboard.
2. Open Knowledge Base > Licence and confirm that it says active.
3. Clear the WordPress cache.
4. Clear any server or hosting cache.
5. Clear your browser cache.
6. Open the knowledge base in a private browser window.
7. Test one article and one category.
8. Refresh WordPress permalinks if article URLs return 404 errors.

To refresh permalinks:

1. Open Settings > Permalinks.
2. Select Save Changes.
3. Test the knowledge base again.

You do not need to change the selected permalink structure.

Can I still access the content directly in the database?

The content remains in the WordPress database, but you should not need to edit the database directly.

Avoid manually changing licence options or knowledge base records unless you are experienced with WordPress databases and have created a full backup.

The safest option is to restore the subscription and activate the licence normally.

Should I keep a backup of my knowledge base?

Yes. Regular backups are recommended whether the licence is active or not.

Your backup should include:

• WordPress files
• WordPress database
• Uploaded images
• Plugin settings
• Knowledge base articles and categories

A licence issue does not normally delete content, but backups protect the website from unrelated server, database or hosting problems.

Keeping the knowledge base online

An active subscription keeps the public knowledge base available and gives you continued access to article management, search, analytics, updates, compatibility improvements and SoftwareRoad support.

If your knowledge base is used for customer help, product instructions or support documentation, it is worth checking that the payment method connected to the subscription remains up to date.

This helps avoid an unexpected interruption to the knowledge base.