Exclude dev/staging sites from API site limit

[KOMarketing2025]

Dev, Staging domains like .local or .dev should be whitelisted / not count towards activiations. See how gravity wiz handles their domain list: https://gravitywiz.com/documentation/licenses-on-staging-and-development-environments/ as a model.

Thanks!

[sybrew]

Thank you for highlighting this issue!

I never considered this because I expected it to be abused. Still, I should not degrade the experience of my paying customers because of a few pirates.

I have always included an extra activation on the lowest Premium tier just for development sites (which is also free to use on any other site).

Still, it wouldn't hurt to throw in an extra freebie and make everyone's lives easier.

I'm unsure if I need to make any changes in Extension Manager to achieve this, or if I should only update the API server.
But it could be helpful to show the site's exclusion state in Extension Manager.
I should also retest the impact of moving sites from one domain to another.

The proposed exclusion list (from GravityWiz)

Suffixes/TLDs

yoursite.azurewebsites.net
yoursite.cloudwaysapps.com
yoursite.ddev
yoursite.dev
yoursite.dreamhosters.com
yoursite.flywheelsites.com
yoursite.kinsta.cloud
yoursite.kinsta.com
yoursite.lndo.site
yoursite.loc
yoursite.local
yoursite.myftpupload.com
yoursite.onlinehome.us
yoursite.pantheonlocal.com
yoursite.pantheonsite.io
yoursite.savviihq.com
yoursite.stage.site
yoursite.test
yoursite.wpengine.com
yoursite.wpenginepowered.com
yoursite.wpstagecoach.com

Subdomains

beta.yoursite.com
corpwebstg.yoursite
dev.yoursite.com
pantheon-dev.yoursite.com
pantheon-live.yoursite.com
preprod.yoursite.com
stage.yoursite.com
staging.yoursite.com
stagingsite.yoursite.com
upgrade.yoursite.com

[KOMarketing2025]

Your welcome! I'm hoping it can't be abused because the idea is that the development domains can never be live sites. for example, its okay to whitelist "yoursite.local" because .local is not public. Not sure about the others. I know that technically .wpengine.com is public, but its not something that could ever really get traffic.

[sybrew]

The issue I had in mind is that people could share their keys publicly, allowing random individuals to use them on development sites and consume API credits for Focus's dictionary.

Another issue I had in mind is that people could register a site with us as ".local" in the back end and then make it a public site on the front end.

But, again, I'd rather have the system abused than restrict paying customers.

I'll add a limit on the number of development sites that can be used simultaneously, which will probably be a quarter of the allotted sites, with a minimum of 1. I can adjust these limits according to user requests and make adjustments for everyone when these requests pile up.