PHP Developer / Blog

I will scream if one more person tells me that I’ve wasted my time by writing a web framework because there are already so many available. The truth of the matter is that they’re right. The part that they’re missing out on is that writing a framework is one of the best exercises you can do as a web developer. So regardless if you plan on using the framework you write is irrelevant though I suggest you do because ironing out the fine details will make you a better programmer. (more…)

So you’ve set up all your rewrite rules and then sometime noticed that some of your urls aren’t working like you’d hoped. Maybe it’s throwing a 404 error or going to a different page that you’re expecting. It’s nearly impossible to track down unless you know about Apache’s RewriteLogLevel and RewriteLog directives. These gems can tell you precisely what Apache is doing when applying rewrite rules to a given request. (more…)

The previous article in this series talked about how to set PHP up so that it’s a lean mean processing machine. Now we get to make sure that our PHP code follows suit.

Also read part 1 of this article.

I’ll cover 10 lesser known PHP functions or methods that can help streamline your PHP code. (more…)

I’ll be the first to state that there is no shortcut to making your PHP applications scream. This series aims to break it down into several steps. The first step will be taking a look at the PHP configuration on the server. We’ll be focusing specifically on PHP this article as a later article will cover 3rd party software which are an essential part of scaling your applications. Comments and suggestions welcome!

Also read part 2 of this article.

PHP.ini, getting your hands dirty
Almost all of the PHP configuration options are available in your php.ini file. PHP ships with several defaults which are suited for compatibility and not for performance. Let’s change that! It’s important to understand your application and what you can and cannot change. In some cases you might want to have allow_url_fopen = On even though I would generally recommend against it. Keep that in mind when reading this list. (more…)

I decided to embark on figuring out how to make my site as fast as possible. There were a few tips I was already aware of but decided to grade myself using YSlow. My initial score was bad, an F. I realized I had to do a few things.

• Compress text/* files using gzip
• Decrease HTTP requests by combining multiple JavaScript (and CSS) files into single files
• Add aggressive caching since the site isn’t updated very often (especially images, JavaScript and CSS files)

Here’s what my original scores looked like. (more…)

This step by step guide will help you get set up with EpiCode (documentation) in under 15 minutes. EpiCode is a framework that maps URLs to static methods. It also has a few utility functions to make templating completely painless. There’s no new templating syntax to learn since PHP does a great job at that already. EpiCode also handles variable scope so you don’t have to worry about mucking up the global namespace. (more…)