PHP Encoder - which one to use?

[DEVELISH]

Hi,

I am looking for a PHP Encoder and can't decide which one is "best".

Which one are you using and what made you chose it over some other encoder?

DEV...

[jIgG]

zend is the most popular and is pretty much the default installed on most hosting packages i've seen

[DEVELISH]

Zend Guard also is $600 (or €398) or €600 ($902) - depends on which country store you buy it from Zend....

ionCube is pretty wide spread, too, isn't it?

[Lee]

Yeah Zend or IonCube are the two most popular, from what i understand Zend seems to be more widespread though.

Regards,

Lee

[gaybucks_chip]

I've heard of a number of developers and commercial software producers switching from Zend to IonCube, but haven't heard of any going the opposite direction.

I have no idea why, though.

[nickbaer]

I use the php editor built in to DreamWeaver (8). Old but reliable.

Prints pretty colors for variables vs strings vs functions, and even offers hints for formatting functions.

The php I do is pretty basic (no pun intended).

[DEVELISH]

thanks nickbear...

but i meant encoder not editor... on my mac I use smultron or netbeans... also played with Komodo IDE from Activestate but that is a little costly...

guess ionCube or Zend is my way to go... then I chose ionCube as the price is not as devastating

[steven619]

Zend or ioncube are good.

For the most part, most of the sites I work with use Zend.
But they are really close.. and even if your hosting company doesn't have it installed, it is pretty easy to do with general access.

[nickbaer]

In what context do you need an "encoder" when all the hosts I use support php?

[DEVELISH]

An PHP encoder translates the source code into something less readable and more secure (it obscures it). After encoding the code should be in a state where reverse engineering is not feasible and hopefully not possible.

A PHP compiler/cache translates php code into machine code for that processor architecture PHP runs on (x86 in most cases) and stores it either in memory or on the file system. Without a compiler/cache PHP is compiled each time the script is called... this consumes enormous amounts of time and resources compared to just running the compiled and optimized code already on hand.

A encoder together with a compiling cache gives you the advantage of deploying or selling your PHP applications and scripts without giving away your source codes AND the ability to run those applications MUCH faster - a 10 fold acceleration is not uncommon.

The reason I asked is that I have "some" code I was working on for the last 3.5 years and wrapping up for deployment to different servers right now. Programming it was hard work - I had to read basically everything I could about natural language processing, taxonomy and categorization, pattern recognition (THIS is a great resource http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html), automated image processing, RSS, XML and about every single webmaster blog google and other search engines offer, just to come up with thousands lines of code.

By the way... anybody here who knows how I run a MyDNS DNS server? I need to feed it with the right data and have no idea just how a DNS works in detail in the means of which records are the ones required.

A DNS is the last piece I need to plug in... please help, my brain is full

DEV...

[nickbaer]

Makes great sense!

The PHP I do is much simpler... reading SQL tables and folders with photos.