PHP - CMS Recommendation For Licensing Type Script

Question

So I'm trying to make my own mini CMS, and just for my knowledge once I get it good enough, and I know enough, I'd like to sell it. Now for licensing, I know there's tons of licensing scripts you can pay for, but would the following be advisable?

I'd like to plant a script hidden in my CMS where instead of checking for some sort of key, it checks if your domain is allowed to run the CMS by running it past the main CMS database. Now I have two questions.

1.) Could I encrypt the code, so if I wanted it to redirect to a page where it just says "CMS Deactivated" For example, so that people don't go through the code just ctrl-f searching for the key text?

2.) I was going to reach the domain name by doing the following, $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']. Is that going to be a reliable way of checking the domain? IE. Will IIS pick up on it?

I'm not trying to completely extinguish cracking of the CMS, I know that is impossible.

Answer 1

Maybe you should consider housing the whole thing on your own servers and making the content accessible via a REST API. You can certainly restrict and control that way.

Providing a CMS with source code to any client opens you to evaluation and cleansing. Not saying there's no way, but I am saying it may be easier for you to provide the content via REST than to write perfect security. Especially if you're asking this question.

Answer 2

As I said in my comment, I think worring about money is irrelevant for now, but here's some information for you to learn from.

1.) I haven't found an encryption solution that works. Any will require you to install additional PHP components (and no one wants to deal with that when there are plenty of free CMS's out there). There is code obfuscation, but that's iffy at best.

2.) According to this page, that should work on IIS!