Restricted Publication Tools - Make Keys

Applies to HTML Viewer, IE Browser publications.

When a user buys a copy of your publication, you need to send him a key that allows him to upgrade to another certificate than the default one (so he can access to the registered version). This key can be created by clicking the Make Key button in the "Restricted Publication Tools" tab.

The Key Generator will ask you to enter the user's name, optionally his/her company's name and the user's system ID (for hardware-locked keys). Then press Generate: the registration code will appear. Press Copy to clipboard or Save As to save the registration code to a text file: you can then send this text file or registration code to your end user, with additional instructions if you want (it's up to you).

The source code for the key generator is freely available to registered users of the Professional/Commercial editions.

We also offer scripts (php, C#, Pascal, VB and VBA scripts for php, asp.net, VBA... applications) that lets you generate keys for your publications online on a web server. You could integrate this script function in your own registration system. The script is also available to registered users of the Professional/Commercial editions.

Hardware-locked keys: to prevent end users from distributing their key to others or to avoid fraudulent purchases, you can configure the publication to work with hardware-locked keys. In this case, the key issued to a registered user will be based on a unique system ID that depends on the user's computer hardware. The key will consequently only work on the user's computer and it becomes useless if it is shared with other persons.

You can enable or disable the use of hardware-locked keys thanks to the properties of the certificate.

Note: these type of keys depend on the user's computer, so if users change their computer, reformat their disk (due to a crash), change the motherboard of their computer, the system ID will be different. In this case, the key won't work again: you will have to issue a new registration key to your users or provide them with an easy way to get a new one.

How to deliver keys for restricted publications online after payment

We have an online simulation that shows you:

  • how to deliver registration keys to customers immediately after orders.
  • how you can prevent end users from sharing full versions of your ebooks on the web by using hardware-locked registration keys.

This simulation is based on our key generator php script as described above.

You can see the working sample here