This article is outdated and may not work correctly for current operating systems or software.
IonCube is software that allows developers to protect their program's code from being copied. It encrypts the software source code so that others can't copy it for illegal usage. In order to be able to run ionCube-encrypted applications, a server-side installation is needed. This guide will teach you how to install ionCube on a CentOS 6 server. If you are an Ubuntu 14 user, please refer to the Setup IonCube Loader on Ubuntu 14 doc.
For this tutorial, you must already have a LAMP stack installed with a web server running.
First off, navigate to your web directory (for example /var/www/html). This depends on your web control panel or custom setup:
cd /var/www/html
In order to download ionCube for the 32-bit version of CentOS 6, execute:
wget http://downloads3.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86.tar.gz
For the 64-bit version of CentOS 6, execute:
wget http://downloads3.ioncube.com/loader_downloads/ioncube_loaders_lin_x86-64.tar.gz
Now, extract the file:
tar xvfz ioncube*
Rename the folder for easier access from the web:
mv ioncube* ioncube
Access the ionCube setup wizard by navigating to http://www.your-website.com/ioncube in your web browser.
In your browser, you will now see a wizard that needs to be completed. It contains some basic steps such as telling ionCube on what kind of server you're using (in this case VPS/Dedicated server). Walk through the steps. When asked which PHP version you use, execute php -v on your server (this will return a version). Once finished, IonCube will be installed on your server.
You can now use ionCube-encrypted software, such as WHMCS, on your server!