IonCube Loader is a software tool, which is required to run files which are encrypted with ionCube PHP Encoder. The latter is an application employed to make PHP code human unreadable, so as to protect it from reverse engineering and / or illegal use. A great number of script-driven apps, in particular community forums, content management systems and e-commerce solutions are encoded with ionCube PHP Encoder, so when you buy a script and you notice that ionCube is on the list of website hosting environment prerequisites, you have to make sure that your web hosting server has the instrument pre-installed. Though it is not that hard to install it if you have your own server, it's close to impossible to do that on a shared web hosting server for the reason that the PHP environment will have to be precompiled and all clients on the server shall be affected.

IonCube in Shared Hosting

IonCube Loader is available with all of the shared hosting plans which we supply, so every time you require it in order to install and run a script application which needs it, you can enable it with a click in the Advanced area of the Hepsia Control Panel. Because you'll be able to change the PHP release that is active for your account from the same section, you need to enable the instrument for each new version that you set. If you're more experienced, you can take advantage of a php.ini file in a domain or subdomain folder and set both the PHP version as well as the status of ionCube Loader for this particular website only, without affecting the entire account. In this way you are able to manage both new and older script applications for multiple websites within the same account - something that you will not be able to do with a lot of other website hosting suppliers out there.