This book contains tips, tricks, and techniques to make new and existing PHP applications much faster and less resource-hungry. Author James McLean looks at all major sections of the PHP application stack-from server hardware to database and web server performance. PHP program application performance is the center of this book, and James McLean shows you how to improve performance by best practices, proper design, and best-of- breed tools. McLean starts out by establishing performance testing and benchmarking methodology using common open source and browser-based testing tools. He then discusses best practices for PHP development, and also explains refactoring existing code, both with performance in mind. In addition to best coding practices, this book will teach you how to use and tweak Opcode caches such as APC, XCache, and eAccelerator.
