If your system doesn't support runtime loading for Ioncube, and you are on a shared server with no access to a php.ini file, it may be worth looking in detail at your hosting account's control panel as some hosting companies provide a dedicated setting for enabling/disabling Ioncube. If there's no such setting in your control panel, you should contact your hosting company and ask what support they have for Ioncube. Ioncube is a popular utility and most established hosting companies will have had experience with it.

If your hosting company can't help, there's another method that can work on some servers:

1) Upload the ionCube files to the top of your user directory (level above your WWW or public_html directory)

2) Create new or edit existing .htaccess file

3) Add this line in the .htaccess file: php_value zend_extension <path>/ioncube_loader_XXXXX (substitute the 'XXXXX' with the rest of the loader's name, which depends on the server and version of PHP you're using).

NB: <path> should be replaced with the absolute path to the loader file, eg: /usr/home/ioncube/ioncube_loader_etc...

This tells the server to change the php_value for your site even without access to the PHP.INI file, and should get Ioncube working.