1. Quickstart Guide
On this page we will show the basic steps for creating a new project and encoding files. The full range of available features are described in later sections. If you are using the full version of the Encoder rather than the evaluation and have not yet licensed the product, please read about licensing the Encoder and then return here afterwards.
Start the application from the item provided in the Windows Start Menu. The following window will appear:
Creating a New Encoder Project
The first step is to create a new Encoder project. An Encoder project stores all the settings necessary to encode a PHP project in the way that you want, and over time, you will probably create an Encoder project file for each PHP project that you wish to encode.
To create a new project, choose the File/New Project... menu option or click the first toolbar icon 
. An unconfigured project will be created and the project settings dialog will soon appear. The Encoder has many features, and the available project settings are grouped on different tabs according to their function. For now we will just configure where the PHP project source files are located, whether they use the PHP 4, PHP 5 or PHP 5.3 language, and choose the location for where the encoded project is to be created.
Setting the Source Files Folder and Language
With the project settings dialog open, select the Source tab if it is not currently active, and in the field Project source folder type the location of your project source files; then press enter. If the source folder exists, the Project files section will now show your project files tree. Different icons indicate how the Encoder will process each file and folder. Files that match the default PHP extensions will be encoded (
), others will be copied (
), and any files or folders matching the default excluded item patterns will not be processed (
). Notice that a popup menu is displayed if you right click on files and folders in the tree with options to change how the Encoder will process the selected item(s). The icon buttons at the top of the tree can also be used for this purpose. Lastly on this tab, you should select whether the source files use PHP 4, PHP 5 or PHP 5.3 syntax. The default Source language is PHP 5, but if your source files use only PHP 4 syntax or if you are using the PHP 5.3 language, change the setting accordingly. If the Encoder reports parsing errors during encoding then remember to check that the correct language type is selected as an incorrect setting is the most likely cause.
Note that regardless of source language, if you know that the servers running your scripts will use PHP 5.3, it is recommended to select PHP 5.3 as there are performance benefits to PHP 5.3 encoded files over previous languages.
Setting the Target Folder
Now change to the Target tab. Notice that the Target folder name has been set to the same name as your project folder, and you can change this if you wish. Now enter the Location of project target folder, for example, C:\encoded-projects. The Encoder also needs to know what to do if the target folder exists. The default setting is to Replace the target folder each time the project is encoded, and other options are to merge (create/overwrite) files into the target, rename the existing target to a unique name, or only process and update files where the source file is newer than the target or if there is no corresponding target file. Keeping the default option to Replace files is recommended, and a Quick Build option from the Project menu can be used to perform an update operation when required.
The basic settings are now configured, so click OK to close the project settings.
Building (encoding) Your Project
You are now ready to build your project. Choose the Project/Build menu option or click the Start Building toolbar icon 
. Files will be processed, and a yellow status indicator icon will appear in the bottom right corner of the window while the Encoder is running. The Event Log tree in the main window will show how items have been processed as well as any warnings or errors. Once building is complete, your encoded files can be copied to a web server.
Now that you have completed the quick start guide, a good place to continue reading is with the project settings. The PDF user Guide is also a good source of reference. As well as describing every Encoder command line option in detail, which may be useful even though you are using the GUI, the licensing features of the Pro and Cerberus Encoder are explained, and the Loader API is also explained.