Ask your WordPress questions! Pay money and get answers fast! Comodo Trusted Site Seal
Official PayPal Seal

ioncube encoder - which loaders to include at minimum? WordPress

  • SOLVED

For the pro version of my plugin mapsmarker.com I plan to use ioncube encoder to encrypt parts of the source code to protect the license`s validity.
If ioncube is not installed on the users server, the ioncube loaders included in my plugins are used to decrypt this part of the source code.
From the ioncube website I see that there are loaders for many OS available: http://www.ioncube.com/loaders.php
Including all of them would make the plugin package way too bloated.

I therefore wonder if anyone here has experiences which loaders for which OS one should definitely include in his package in order to make my pro pluginĀ  as compatible as possible without bloating its size too much.

If anyone knows about statistics about which OS have ioncube package included by default, this would also help.

I also wonder if I should include packages for servers with thread safety disabled.

Any other recommendations for using ioncube encoder are welcome too :-)

Answers (1)

2013-05-27

Susanta K Beura answers:

Dear Robert Harm,

I used ioncube to encode a theme for a client. Purpose was same, to protect it and licensing. But I didn't found any such facility, which can be included with encoded package. Ioncube decoder are installed on a server along with PHP as add ons and relies on PHP to run as and when required. So it cannot be included with the distribution package. Almost (95%+) servers are equipped with ionCube decoders. For rest your client can be advised to contact their server admin and I am sure no admin will disagree to install ioncube decoder add ons on their server.

Thank you
Susanta K Beura (aka WP-Guru)
skype: susanta.k


Robert Seyfriedsberger comments:

thanks - as php 5.2.5 or greater doesn't allow runtime loading for ioncube Loader files, I decided to not include any Loader files and just integrate the loader-wizard.php file which redirects the user to the proper Loader package in case it isn't installed on his server. This helps keeping my plugin size small :-)