30 day trial, encrypted??

[homerUK]

We are considering packaging our product, but want to know a few things - so if anyone has any advice, please let us know :) thanks.

Background: A PHP/mySQL product which people will download and run locally on their machines.

1. We'd like to generate a random password or licence key which will allow the user 30 days usage of the product, after that they need to apply for a new one.

2. Is it possible to encrypt the PHP code class files?

If anyone has any advice, or suggestions, please post - thank you :)

[dniwebdesign]

I have noticed a few other scripts out there which do encode their product using I believe Zend. I don't know much otherwise but might be worth checking out.

[kewlceo]

I have noticed a few other scripts out there which do encode their product using I believe Zend. I don't know much otherwise but might be worth checking out.
Very true, this would be an effective guard against most casual copying. It can be decoded, however, so the more knowledgeable user could spread the script around.

[homerUK]

thanks guys - I will check out the ZEND option - we're probably being a bit over kill - but we're thinking of using the PHP time function on an encrypted page to check 30 day periods that require a new key to use or something.

thanks again :)

[fci]

http://eaccelerator.net/ <-- the one you should look at
http://turck-mmcache.sourceforge.net/ <-- eaccelerator is based off this
http://www.ioncube.com/ <-- commerical