Pinnacle Cart requires static IP and domain for usage!

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volomike
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Pinnacle Cart requires static IP and domain for usage!

Post by volomike »

To my horror today I find that Pinnacle Cart, a paid-only licensed PHP shopping cart/product catalog product, requires a static IP address and static domain in order for one to license the product properly. As a developer trying to make file changes like 1500 times a day for a plugin or theme for this product, this might not be a big deal if you're on wicked fast high speed Internet, but not DSL high speed Internet that's only around 1.5Mbits download and 400Kbits upload. In fact, it's downright impractical. When I complained to Pinnacle, they simply shrugged their shoulders and said, "Get a DynDNS account and reregister the product. We require a static IP and static domain in order for the licensing to go through properly."

That's a ridiculous requirement! It's ridiculous for developers. It also requires that I poke a firewall hole to my web server in order to expose it to the world, which is something I don't feel like doing with my workstation. The client already paid me a cash advance on the project, so I have to make this work. The code can't be hacked because it's got IonCube stuff for this licensing. As well, it calls home. I tried the DNS hack (/etc/hosts + edit Apache config + create alias paths on my workstation) to completely simulate the hosting account environment, but it didn't work because it calls home and the home server sees my DSL IP instead of the hosting account IP.

I asked the client if he would consider OpenCart or Magento, but I think he's beholden to this product and company. He's also paid $1000 USD for the license to it.

Not going to be a good day...
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VladSun
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Re: Pinnacle Cart requires static IP and domain for usage!

Post by VladSun »

How about playing with the /etc/hosts file? Will it help?
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't
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twinedev
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Re: Pinnacle Cart requires static IP and domain for usage!

Post by twinedev »

That does suck for development purposes, but could see why they have that in place to protect their product from getting copied. I have heard of needing to verify a static IP like when I licensed cPanel but not the actual domain as well. Sounds like they don't want anyone but themselves playing with the code to keep profits in house.

I was just looking at their site, and it does list "source code available on request", yet then it says that is $200 more. You say he paid $1000 for the license, and unless they lowered the prices since then, that is the cost of the developer license which allows source code. I'd make sure what license they have and get the source. Then you should be able to rip out the ET lockdown. (It is what I call software that must communicate back to original server.... Phone Home... for those too young to get the reference to the movie LOL)

-Greg
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volomike
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Re: Pinnacle Cart requires static IP and domain for usage!

Post by volomike »

* The source code they provide still has some Ioncube encoding in some parts, and still requires a "call home" approach to registration.

* I was FINALLY able to get something working. I called Tech Support directly and the tech there at first said it couldn't be possible, that I physically had to have a server on the web and couldn't run from my workstation. However, then I said, "Couldn't you just see what comes across the web on your server and approve me?" He then said, "Let me see." Sure enough, he found me and registered me. Success! I then asked, "What if my IP changes?" He said, "In this case, you're still approved because I did it by hostname that came through on registration. You set your hostname to 'x.com' to your local workstation webserver, and that's what we approved instead of IP address. I then asked, "What about my client? They were the ones who paid for the license. Do you permit us to use that $1000 license to install on production, staging, and development?" His answer was yes -- can use the license three ways like that. So, I was set and I used the product. It's not an awful product -- I've seen worse. It certainly was easy to theme, I found out. In fact, I actually *liked* the theme engine, to my surprise. I didn't like the fact that it also uses Smarty, which I find redundant to PHP Alternative Syntax. However, the other thing it uses, and this is the thing that I like, is this system where it will use your file instead of its file, giving you full power to replace many of their own internal view files.
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