With a fully functional 30-day free trial of Community Central, you can create an unlimited number of forums and blog sites to use. However, when your trial expires, you have three different license key types that you can purchase, activate, and utilize. In this article, we’ll show you how to activate Limit Keys (20 Forums/20 Blogs and 100 Forums/100 Blogs) and Unlimited Keys.

When your Community Central expires, you will get the following License error message:

In order to activate the key, you will need to follow these steps:

Verify/Manage License Keys:

Go to the Community Central Setup program.  Under Licensing, select Bamboo Web License Manager and click Install.

After you have successfully installed the Bamboo Web License Manager, go to the Central Administration page.  There will now be a Bamboo Solutions section.

Click on Manage My License Keys.

After clicking on Manage My License Keys, you will see the Suites and Packs and Individual Products.

When you click on Community Central Packs, it will show up as Not Active. This means that your product license has expired.

Similarly, when you go to each individual product, it will likewise show up as Expired.

Activate License Keys:

1. 20 Forum Limit Keys:

Click on Community Central Packs and use the 20 Forum Limit Key to activate.

Its status will now be displayed as Active.

Scenario 1: If you created a site collection that had fewer than or equal to 20 Forums/20 Blog sites, make sure that the license error message is no longer present after you activate the key.

Scenario 2: If you created a site collection that had more than 20 Forums/20 Blog sites, after you activate the key, you will get an error message letting you know that you have exceeded your license limits.

2. 100 Forum Limit Keys:

Click on Community Central Packs and use the 100 Forum Limit Key to activate.

Please note that if you used the key 20 Forum Limit first and then use the key 100 Forum Limit, you will need to use the command prompt iisreset to get rid of the error message.

Scenario 1: If you created a site collection that had fewer than or equal to 100 Forums/100 Blog sites, make sure that the license error message is no longer present after you activate the key.

Scenario 2: If you created a site collection that had greater than 100 Forums/100 Blog sites, after you activate the key, you will get an error message letting you know that you have exceeded your license limits.

3. Regular Unlimited Keys:

Please note that if you used the key 20 or 100 Forum Limit previously, and then use the key Unlimited, you will need to use the command prompt iisreset to get rid of the error message.

With no limit on the number of Forums and Blog sites that you can create with this key, you need not ever worry about exceeding any upper limit.