IonCube Loader is a tool, that is necessary to run files that are protected with ionCube PHP Encoder. The aforementioned is an application employed to make PHP code human unreadable, to protect it from reverse engineering and / or not authorized usage. A large number of script-driven apps, especially discussion forums, content management systems and electronic commerce solutions are protected with ionCube PHP Encoder, which means that if you get a script and you find that ionCube is on the list of hosting environment requirements, you should ensure that your web hosting server has the tool pre-installed. Though it's not that hard to set it up when you have your own server, it's close to impossible to do that on a shared web hosting server since the PHP environment should be precompiled and all of the clients on the server shall be affected.
