What's the best way to code and distribute free trial license?

[nexgen2]

I sell a webscript which is written in the php language. What I want to do is create a license for each user and limit the script installation to one domain only.

 

Also, I want to distribute this same script as a free trial for 15 days. After that the user must upgrade. The script will call home to verify if the user has valid record in our server or not.

 

What's the best and "hard to crack" way to distribute license in that way?

 

[jcbones]

There is no fool proof way of doing this.  As a good scripter could rip out that part of the code.  Although a good scripter would be able to just write the code themselves.

 

You could base64 in chunks, then as a group.  <- I've seen it done this way more than once. 

 

Bottom line is that everything written in PHP is able to be reverse engineered.

[nexgen2]

I'm aware that everything written in php can be decoded. I just want to make the job harder.

 

What I actually need is that I store the "activation code" in my server and have my script check for that code to activate the script.

 

That way I can deactivate the script if the user ask for the refund.

 

I have heard ionCube or Zend guard can do those. Any suggestion? (I want my script to be self contained and don't want another script to be installed first for using my script)

 

[jcbones]

You need to make the script call a script on your server that accesses your database and returns a code.  Based on this code the script would run, or return an error to the user.

 

No one here is going to write this code for you for free, and then you charge for it.  That would just be dumb on our part.