Thanks, I've bookmarked the site. If you encode your footer using this site, isn't it fairly straightforward for someone to just delete the footer and create a blank footer and thereby eliminate your links? Is there anyway to add hooks between the different php files so that if the footer was replaced with a blank file, the theme would just "break".
Yes, with most encoding you could just delete the footer or replace it with straight HTML source code you pulled through Firefox. It would be possible to do what you want so it "breaks" although I have never gone to those lengths. If no one can answer here, maybe try the PHP forum
Looks like a nice tool, but how do you use the code? I've tried pasting the output where the links went, but it just shows up as text in the footer. Does something need to be installed to decode the encoded text in the theme?
I don't use that, but I don't think it's as easy as cut and paste. http://us.php.net/base64_encode (If you go for an easy solution, it's just as easy or probably easier for a user to just delete your encrypted code and go on with life, making your effort useless anyway.)
I agree whole-heartedly, but the fact that so many people advertise WP themes with encrypted footer links on DP leads me to believe there must a simple way to get it done. Either that or all WP sponsor guys on DP are PHP experts
I just checked that tool and it gives you the obfuscated code, but you still need to put that within a php function to decode it. Pretty simple for a PHP developer. But still, super easy to bypass by most people who know how to install WP.
Agreed. I just want to be able to say it's encrypted because it's expected by people purchasing WP theme sponsorships.
I totally disagree with forcing the end users to have to keep sponsored links in the footers and I do create free WordPress themes. Based on my own experience with providing free themes and templates, most of the time the end user is more than happy to leave the designer link intact. I believe sponsors get plenty of exposure while your theme resides on the many theme sites.
There are easy ways to encode the footer- lots of encoders available for free or you can pay for them
base64 encode is the best way. the link is posted before. i have another with a tutorial for it. will send that as soon as i can find it.
I never encrypt a wordpress theme footer before.. but i'm pretty sure they use php encoder like ioncude http://www.ioncube.com/ or zend guard(formerly zend encoder)( http://www.zend.com/en/products/guard/) there are alot of ways to make your theme break... since you can encode any code.. you can do something as simple as checking for an obscure variable name.. or as complicated as contacting you own web service to check the website for the footer link. but the trick is how to make it so that you only encode just enough so that the user can still customize the theme...
you can try truebug encoder, it has a 15days trial or pay $24.95 for a single user registration. we purchased one and we haven't encounter any trouble using it for the past 4 months (almost 5). easy to use too.
Do you use it just to encrypt the footer? Wouldn't that go back to the original point in that if only the footer is encrypted, it would be just a matter of replacing footer.php with a blank copy and encryption is defeated. Not that I've looked at a lot of different wordpress themes looking for sponsors on this site, but if that is all that is being done, am I mistaken or does this seem a tad weak? Isn't there any way to hook the footer with code in some other scripts so that if the footer code is modified, the rest of the design would "break"?