Encoding a wordpress site to protect the code (eg. obfuscation)

Question

I just wondered if anyone had used Zend Guard/Ion Cube to encode a Wordpress application - I've made a custom WP CMS and was thinking of placing this onto an external server outside of my control.

I was wondering how this would effect things like:

• General speed of the site
• Would this need dedicated hosting? Any issues with shared hosting
• Any unique/special server requirements?
• The ability to update the wordpress core while still keeping it all encoded

Does anyone have any experience doing this with either Zend Guard or similar services, if so what issues did you encounter along the way, also how easy would this be for 'localhost' development?

Answer 1

I can talk about ioncube:

You can easily encode just portion of your code like even single script. It will not affect the whole system as long as it is not encoded the way that disallows including non-encoded (or alien in general) files (but this feature is off by default).

As for performance boost - it depends mostly on script file size - the bigger the gain is more noticeable

As for hostings - user just needs ioncube loader. Most hostings incl. shared ones offer it by default or can enable on request. others, like VPS users etc can install it by hand and loader is free of charge.