I've started to create web application which does some calculations on the data entered by the user, who can also pay for better services. So far, everything is good, but I am stuck with 1 concern: Security.
1. Because my marketing partner bought shared hosting on BlueHost, I had to rewrite the application from .NET into PHP code(until some time ago I had no idea how PHP works and how the hostings works). After some 'research' I started to worry about my source code if I use PHP. I read alot about that I can't 100% secure my source code, but here with PHP it looks like I can't put any other protection than obfustication, so I would like to know some other protective methods(including laws) on the source code if it lay on other server.
2. I will do bank transactions, having SSL Certificate and dedicated IP is a must (as i learnt), what else? Also how protective(encrypted or pure text) should be the database if I store informations like account expiration date, payment expiration, user saved data.
3. How hard is to maintain my own server? (Anything short, but powerful will help alot!)