Protecting code using Zend Guard

Question

I'd like to protect a PHP app that a client wants to have hosted on their own servers - I know that Zend Guard & Ion Cube do some form of protection but i've also found sites that will reverse engineer this code.

My question is - is there a way to obfuscate the code first, then load it through the Zend Guard to give it a 'second layer' of protection.

Apart from the slowdown of performance of this site what other pros & cons could I expect if this is even at all possible?

Answer 1

Pretty much any method of protecting code can be reverse engineered. With regards to the question of obfuscation. Zend Guard already obfuscates code as part of the protection that it offers prior too being encoded.

Further information can be found at Zend's project page http://www.zend.com/en/products/guard/