Overview Tab

The Overview tab provides a general overview of your Zend Guard projects and access to most other available functionality.

This tab is divided into two sections as follows:

General Options - General configuration Settings
Source Options - PHP code global and local settings

General Options

Zend Guard's Overview tab sets the application's general configuration and default project settings

The encoding settings determine the type of encoding to apply to your code and offer other security and obfuscation options to further enhance the safety precautions used to protect your code.

Option	Description
Product Name	Set the name for the Product.
Product Version	Set the Product version.
Output Location	The folder in which the encoded files will be placed.
Zend Loader Compatibility	PHP 5.5 project files that have been encoded or obfuscated more strongly, require Zend Guard Loader 5.5 (or greater) in order to run.
Code Optimization	Optimization enables faster execution and reduces the CPU load for the server. Some scripts may not support optimization (generally, scripts that interface with COM or Java objects). If you experience problems with the encoded scripts, try reducing the optimization level. None - Disables code optimization. Minimal - Use if application does not perform correctly. Full - Recommended optimization level. Optimized files run faster and are more difficult to attack.
Error Handling	Ignore Errors - Encoding will not be terminated when errors occur in the PHP code. Exit on Error - Encoding will stop and display the errors in the Zend Guard's messages area. Note: When integrated with Zend IDE, users can investigate errors with Zend IDE directly from the messages area. To do so, click on a message.
Verbosity Level	The options are: Verbose - Provides detailed information. Silent - Lists Errors only
Links	Click the linked option to open the corresponding Guard dialog: Encode Project - a shortcut to start encoding the project. Add Source - Opens a dialog for adding additional source filed to the project. Export Parameters File - Opens a dialog for generating an XML file containing the project's encoding configurations for "Encoding External code using the XML File". Configure Security Settings - Jump to the Security tab. Configure Obfuscation Exclude List - Jump to the Exclude List tab. Configure PHP Encoded File Headers - jump to the Header Information tab. View these settings in XML Format - Jumps to the XML Editor to display the settings in XML format.

Source Options

Set the following Global and Local Options.

Option	Description
Use Global Source Options	Check this to use the Global options. When this is not checked, the settings will apply only to the specific files or folders selected by the management tab.
PHP Version	Set to encode either PHP 5.5 code or PHP 5.6 code.
Short Tag Support	Enable recognition of short PHP tags. Recognizes <? as a valid PHP start tag. When this option is not selected, Zend Guard will not encode short tags; they will be treated as regular HTML.
ASP Tag Support	Enable recognition of ASP tags. Recognizes <% as a valid PHP start tag. When not selected, code within ASP tags is treated as regular HTML.
Resolve Symlinks	Resolves Symbolic Links before encoding (not applicable in Windows). A symbolic link (often shortened to symlink and also known as a soft link) consists of a special type of file that serves as a reference to another file or directory. Unix-like operating systems in particular often feature symbolic links.
Files to Encode	Lists the file extensions for Guard to encode (extensions not listed will not be encoded). File extensions that are not listed here and in "Patterns to Ignore" will be sent as-is to the output folder.
Patterns to Ignore	Files matching these patterns will *not* be encoded when encoding a directory, nor will they be copied as-is to the target directory. By default, the list contains the CVS directory and cvsignore files.