It’s been a great month for Kernl! Lots of new features, some bug fixes, and few updates to the license checking on the plugin and theme update checker files. Lets dive in!
Features
- Gumroad License Validation – You can now use Kernl to validate your Gumroad licenses! This can be enabled for plugins or themes by going to the product edit screen, clicking the “License Management” tab, and then selecting “Validate Gumroad License?” at the bottom.
- Kernl Referral Program – Kernl has a referral program. For every 3 referrals you send us we’ll give you a free month. Customers signing up with your referral code get their first 3 months free.
- Restrict Updates to a Maximum Version – If you use Kernl’s license management you can now restrict update availability to a maximum version. For example if the current version of your product was 1.5.0 and you gave the user a license for < 1.6.0, then they would receive updates all the way through 1.5.X. This is a great way to drive more sales of your product!
- Plugin/Theme PHP Update Check Files – The license error display behavior of these files has been greatly improved. The error dismisses when it’s supposed to, only shows up on the updates and plugin|theme page, and the license error message can now be customized. It is highly recommended that you update. The file is also versioned now so knowing when to update in the future will be much easier.
Other
- Purchase Code Deprecation – Kernl’s old purchase code frontend interface has been hidden behind a feature flag. The goal is the have the old purchase code functionality completely removed by the end of July.
- Copy Versions from Product to Product – To support special development styles, you can move versions of a product to another product. This is inherently dangerous and only toggled on for the person who requested it. If you think this might be useful please reach out to jack@kernl.us.
- You can now easily click to a customer’s page from the License Management page.
- A bug was fixed where the customer filter would stay set even after you had navigated away from that page.
- Numerous copy changes were made on the License Management page and on the marketing site.
- Some feature flags were removed from features that have proved to be stable.
- The main route for plugin update checks (also the highest traffic route on Kernl) was refactored to use async/await instead of promise chains. This makes it much easier to maintain and improve.