Is Ioncube always required ?

Hello,
(i'm french so excuse for some language mistakes)

1/ I've downloaded SEF_Advance_demo.zip, have built-in SEF enabled, replaced my .htaccess with the one found in SEF Advance zip package and finally installed SEF Advance.

2/ I've installed the ioncube loader properly

and i get that :
"
Site error: the file /home/clubalp/domains/club-alp.com/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.php requires the ionCube PHP Loader ioncube_loader_lin_4.4.so to be installed by the site administrator."


You can test by yourself two links :
87.98.206.148/~clubalp/ioncube/ioncube-l...ge=install-assistant
and
87.98.206.148/~clubalp/sef_advance_tester.php

So my question is : is Ioncube always required for SEF Advance to work, i would like to try it before by it...

Thanks

Yes it is and your system doesn't seem to support run-time loading. You should try to contact your host to see if they can assist in installing the ionCube loader.

I've contacted them and they don't want want to install ioncube library for security reasons...
So i'll try 404SEFx, free but perharps not good...
bye and thanks

Security reasons? Better said lazyness reasons.

I don't know... but if you can understand French, here is the response :

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La fonctione php dl() n'est pas disponible pour des raisons de sécurités du serveur semi-dédié qui vous héberge.
C'est pour cette raison que le Ioncube ne peut s'executé selon le support chez ioncube.

Il n'y a pas de possibilité de ré-activer cette fonction (dl) sur votre compte client. (Trop dangereuse pour le moment)

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That probably means that dl() function for dynamic loading is disabled. So ionCube loaders can't be loaded in the runtime.
However, that doesn't mean that your host can't install ionCube loader in php.ini. If they do that it will work on whole server and it will not compromise security in any way.