Selling site. Way to prevent copying code?

[psychoul]

Hello,

I am thinking to sell a site that contains a nice script I wrote in php. This script is the whole heart of the page but I dont want the buyer to view my code because he can steal it very easily.

What methods do you follow to stop this?

Thanks...

 

[juanvh]

Encrypt it with Ioncube. If you don't want to buy the entire software package, you can buy individual credits and use their online encoder.

 

[psychoul]

so have you tried this?

 

[psychoul]

I am interested how people protect their code. I am sure there are many people here selling sites with their scripts installed so there should be a nice way to do this

 

[juanvh]

Yes, I personally used to use this, and am very satisfied with it. I actually used it together with Iono from Olate (for remote license management), but that was because I was selling software - it's not really practical to use Iono when you are just selling a script with a site.

I've created a small example just to show you how it looks (I still own a license and have it installed). I've attached both the unencrypted and encryted files.

 

[Houdas]

IMHO it's not even worth the effort. I mean, is your script really SO unique? Besides, you can always just obfuscate the code... replace "$MyNiceVariable" with "$A9B852C8", remove whitespaces, newlines, etc... I can't imagine anyone to go through such pile of shit

 

[psychoul]

Yes, I personally used to use this, and am very satisfied with it. I actually used it together with Iono from Olate (for remote license management), but that was because I was selling software - it's not really practical to use Iono when you are just selling a script with a site.

I've created a small example just to show you how it looks (I still own a license and have it installed). I've attached both the unencrypted and encryted files.

Thanks for you recommendations. I will take a look.

@Houdas : Well man. Is not that is SO unique but is a script that I can generate multiple similar pages. Those pages would be useless to sell them as they can be created easily if you have the script.

 

[psychoul]

I dont know what the code does but why not create an API for it and host the code on your server and call it from the site you are selling using the API

That is a good idea actually.

Although I dont exactly know how to create an API but I could create a way to 'feed' the pages I am selling.

Downside to this is the fact that the buyer will feel tied to an external source and now indepentened but hey, they shouldn't buy in the first place

Thanks man! If you have any guidelines (you know the first clue to start my research) about creating an API its more than welcome

 

[aliks0905]

Encrypt it with Ioncube. If you don't want to buy the entire software package, you can buy individual credits and use their online encoder.

Yea, I was going to say that as well. and then do what the other guys said to make the script call the server every month or so to verify that its a valid script