Copy protecting a CMSB template

Hi Jerry,

A few comments on this.

- Typically the clients you'd have as a web developer wouldn't be savvy enough to configure CMS Builder. If they were they wouldn't need a web developer.

- There's solutions out there to hide or obfuscate html and code. They're not that great, can be bypassed and cause other problems.

- There's no way bulletproof way to prevent someone from copying it (or really anything). Your best re-course is to make sure the client is clear about his license or rights to use the software and protect your Intellectual Property through legal ways.

- If someone is using your copyright content on a web server hosted in the US you can send a DMCA complaint and then either: the host will have to remove the content, the user will have to affirm it's not yours (which makes them liable if it is), or the host becomes liable (they don't want that).

Hope that helps!

Thanks Dave, that's sort of what I suspected. Appreciate the feedback.

Another thought,

Is there any way that you can think of that some of the php code (like something in the required area or some of the page's php calls) can be located on another server that's protected?

Thanks,

Jerry

Yes, if you had a hosting account with a mysql database that allowed remote connections you could have them login to a CMS on your server and just have the viewer code on their server that connected to your database.

Or vice versa, they could use the software on your server to update their database (if it allowed remote connections).

I'm not sure how we'd work the licensing for that but it's one way to do it.

Glad I continued the conversation,

I like the "having them access my server" idea, since I can then control the schema.

Since I won't be doing this without the client buying their own CMSB license for their non-template pages, and I already have a CMSB license, would that suffice?

Thanks,

Jerry

We could talk about licensing in more detail, but basically it's one license per website. So if this is for one website so far then your license would suffice.

You'll need to figure out if you're going to have them use your database (slower) or require them to have a mysql database (faster since it's closer to their website but requires their database to allow remote connections which not all hosts support).

Best thing to do is give it a try. Create a CMS install and enter the details for another websites database (hostname, username, etc) and see if you can connect.

Hope that helps!