It’s you’re a freelance web developer like me and work for clients on verbal or email based contracts; chances are you have experienced not getting paid or being coursed in doing more than what was initially agreed upon before getting paid. It’s just one of those pitfalls of our profession. Even with signed, counter signed and notarized contracts clients can still squirm their way out of them and not pay you.
So in the effort to prevent getting scammed I started encoding my work with Zend Guard. It encrypts your code and is decoded server side. The Zend Optimizer which is used to decode encrypted files is built into 95% of the Apache+PHP servers online, so compatibility will rarely be an issue. Even if they manage to decode the encrypted files they won’t get the full source in tact (trust me I’ve tried) , it also takes significant effort and time to do it.
Sample Zend Guard encrypted file
Now once you get fully compensated for your work you can then provide the raw source to your client. It may not be a full proof solution of getting paid but it is a deterrent/safeguard at the very least. You may also put some time limitation on your code for added security if you’re really that paranoid.
