Posted By Ian on Jun 19, 2004 | 0 comments

     So I’m on IRC this morning and the typical “any PHP coders looking for cash?” message shot up. Usually, I don’t even bother, but I felt like seeing what this guy was looking for. So I find out he’s trying to query some database, has a pretty decent business model for driving people to his site. So I start tinkering with the data. It’s all publicly accessible stuff, so it’s just manipulating what’s there so that there’s a more detailed search and faster access. The reason I don’t usually bother is because I have no way of proving that this guy is going to send me money. But with PHP, I totally do. Using the Zend Encoder, I can encode every script I send to this guy’s server and put an expiration date on it. Basically holding him hostage to pay his bills to me. I ran the concept by him and he was sold, he gets the programming he needs right away, so that it can be implemented without any trouble and I get to have an expiration date on his site so that if he doesn’t pay me, the work I’ve done, is undone. It’s a pretty great system really. Now it’s not for everyone though, Zend Encoder isn’t cheap, but I’m in a pretty good situation from here on in.