Given at php tek 2011, a frontend to server setup tour of how to squeeze performance out of your PHP powered website.

1. PHP Go VROOOM!
How to take a site from slow to go

2.  This talk is for beginners
 This is not “how to profile PHP”
 This is not “how to use HipHop”
 This is not how to profile your network
 Velma would be bored (you might be too)
 I will no doubt rant
Disclaimer

3. PHP is NOT your problem!*
*95.99% of the time

4.  Client Side  IO
 Server Side  Database
 Frameworks
 Hardware
Let the Lecture Begin!
Why your app is slow…

5. Client Side
Do you want some Expires with that?

6.  http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/
 http://code.google.com/speed/page-
speed/
 http://tools.pingdom.com/
 http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/
Profile – Don’t Guess!

7.  Make it external
 One file – minimized and compressed
(minify)
 Put it at the top
 Use sprites for images
 Avoid expressions
 No @import
 Use conditional tags for IE issues, not css
hacks
 Specific Selectors
 Give images dimensions
CSS

8.  Make it external
 One file – minimized and compressed
(minify)
 Put it at the bottom
 Or defer the loading completely
 Use a well maintained framework
 document.write is a bad bad thing
Javascript

9.  Use the right format – png, gif or jpg
 Compress that image – lots of
compression tools available
 Keep them small
 Scale them on the server, not with html
size/width
 Have a small, cacheable favicon.ico
 Use sprites for layouts
Images

10.  Keep them small
 Keep them very domain specific
Cookies (om nom nom)

11.  Compress, compress, compress
 Use a CDN and/or media server
 Reduce DNS Lookups
 No 404‟s, empty img/hrefs
 Avoid redirects
 Parallelize downloads
 Watch external script use! (fb, google,
social anything)
HTTP Requests

12.  Use cache control headers!
◦ Expires
◦ Last-Modified
◦ (best)
◦ Cache-Control
◦ Etag
◦ (harder to get right)
 Be kind to proxies as well
Client Side Caching

13.  http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/
rules.html
 http://code.google.com/speed/page-
speed/docs/rules_intro.html
 http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2
616.html
 Use the Google
Reference

14. Server Setup
Have you hugged your sysadmin today?

15.  Apache Bench
 Siege
 Http_Load
 JMeter
Profile, Don’t Guess!

16.  Security
 Speed
 Some Pain (worth it)
 Compile your own – it‟s faster then the
distros!
◦ Drop your debug data
◦ Tune to your architecture
◦ At the very least do PHP, Server, Database
Upgrade your Software

17. “memcache does precisely f**k all for
opcode caching” – Michael Maclean
This is the #1 best way to speed up your
PHP site
Install APC (or something)

18.  Simple servers for static content
 Cache full pages and bypass PHP
 Dynamic images and CSS are a pain, find
another solution
 CDN solutions are more affordable then
ever before
 run a reverse proxy-cache
Don’t Use PHP and Use a CDN

19. Pick the right Tools

20.  Add more CPUs or more cores
 Add more RAM
 Use RAID or Solid State drives
 Network can definitely be a bottleneck –
but like PHP it‟s the last thing to fix - hire
a really smart guy
Hardware

21.  http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/44/S
calable%20Internet%20Architectures%20
Presentation%202.pdf
 http://ilia.ws/files/Moscow2010_Optimizat
ion_Mistakes.pdf
 http://people.apache.org/~sctemme/Apco
nEU2006/FR4/FR4_Performance_Up.pdf
 http://omniti.com/surge/2011
Resources

22. Database
Use indexes people!

23.  Mysql – has profiler built in
 Postgresql – turn on logging and use
analyzer on logs
 SQL Server – built in profiler
 MongoDB – built in profiler
Profile – Don’t Guess!

24.  Do not guess
 Add indexes where needed
 Sometimes it‟s faster to do the work in
PHP
 Log on the PHP side, count on the PHP
side… then do it on the server side too
 Always try to do fewer queries
Analyze your Queries

25.  Query Caching
◦ PHP side – cache generated queries
◦ Server side – query cache
 Results Caching
◦ Memcached is your friend
 Libmemcached = php‟s memcached (faster, non-
portable)
 php sockets = php‟s memcache (slower,
completely portable)
◦ File caching – sometimes IO is faster then db
Cache Everything

26.  Use transactions as appropriate
 Normalize your data (or use nosql)
 Minimize connections to the db
 Foreign keys can be slower, use cautiously
Best Practices are “Best” for a
Reason

27.  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/
optimization.html
 http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Performan
ce_Optimization
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ff647793.aspx
Resources

28. PHP Optimization
echo not print… are you kidding me?

29.  XhProf
 Xdebug
 DBG (free and pay versions)
 APD – older but serviceable
 Inclued
 Memtrack
 Scream (also in xdebug)
Profile – Don’t Guess

30. “We should forget about small efficiencies,
say about 97% of the time: premature
optimization is the root of all evil.”
- Donald Knuth
“Knowing when optimization is premature
defines the difference between the master
engineer and the apprentice.”
- Theo Schlossnagle
The Boss knows Best

31.  In-memory sessions are faster than disk
or database equivalents. (mm, apc,
wincache or memcache)
 Cache pages partially, or fully – store in
memcache, have apache bypass PHP
 Cache any and everything
 Cache in layers – browser, full page,
partial page, data, query results,
application settings
Cache

32.  Gearman it
 Fork it
 Cron it
 Exec it
 Parallelization needs communication
though!
Farm it out

33.  Reflection is nice – but it is VERY slow and
memory heavy
 This kind of job is much better when
handed off to C (yaml extension, for
example)
 Writing extra code is worth the
performance improvement
 Just because you CAN do something in
PHP just like $lang doesn‟t mean that‟s
the best solution
Avoid Runtime Introspection

34.  Avoid lots of stats
 Use an opcode cache (yes, I‟m saying it
AGAIN)
 Try not to have too many files in a
directory
 include_path as short as possible
 Use absolute paths
File and I/O

35. “I'm saying that if your autoloader is a
significant fraction of the work your app
does, then you are either Doing It
Wrong™, or really unlikely, Doing It Very
Well Indeed™ I know which I favour”
-Michael Maclean
Balance Speed and Maintainability
Autoload and Includes

36.  NFS is of the devil – do not use it
 Errors are always created, even if you
don‟t see them
◦ error_reporting(-1);
 @ is terrible! Set and restore error
handler if you know something will spit,
it‟s STILL faster
Very Bad Things

37.  „‟ is a wee bit faster than “”
 echo not print
 Don‟t use magic methods
 ++$i not $i++
 $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'] not time()
 static methods are faster
 $function() not call_user_func(„function‟)
 arrays are faster then objects
Micro Optimizations (Here be Evil)

38.  http://xdebug.org
 https://github.com/jokkedk/webgrind
 https://github.com/facebook/xhprof
 http://pecl.php.net/package/inclued
 https://github.com/eexit/Inclued
 http://pecl.php.net/package/scream
 http://pecl.php.net/package/memtrack
Resources

39. Frameworks
Sure you wrote the code faster…
Trick them into running faster…

40. “You are trading „development speed‟ for
„processing speed‟ … all you do is waste all day
reading docs to produce a half-assed project”
– Bob Majdak Jr
“ORMs are great for automating the sort of query
that an idiot could write, and useless for
anything non-trivial.”
– Greg Chiasson
http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/5/2/stack-
overflow-makes-slow-pages-100x-faster-by-
simple-sql-tu.html
ORMS

41.  Remove require/include calls and use
autoloader or include_all files
 Avoid lots of configuration in parseable
files (yaml, ini, etc)
 Turn off Debug features
 Use any sort of database caching available
 Watch your “dispatch loops” – write
something custom if you need to
 Watch Plugin loading of all types
Frameworks

42.  Switch to another system (lots of importers)
 Use a cache plugin – or two, or three
 Keep wordpress up to date
 Don‟t use a lot of plugins
 Don‟t use the wp-db-abstraction plugin or
any other plugin doing crazy things to the
core
 It‟s just PHP, do all the PHP things too!
Wordpress

43.  Install a Cache  Install a Cache
plugin plugin
 Limit other Plugins  Limit other Plugins
in use in use
 Disable anonymous  Make sure
sessions debugging is off in
 Use a simple theme production
 All the other PHP  Turn off statistics
stuff  All the other PHP
stuff
Drupal, Joomla

44.  http://groups.drupal.org/high-performance
 http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Opti
mization
 http://www.joomlaperformance.com/
 http://www.brandonsavage.net/micro-
optimizations-that-dont-matter/
 http://weierophinney.net/matthew/archives/
245-Autoloading-Benchmarks.html
 http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/perfo
rmance.html
 http://www.endyourif.com/optimizing-
cakephp-websites/
 http://trac.symfony-
project.org/wiki/Optimization
Resources

45. Write it in C
When PHP actually IS the problem

46.  http://emsmith.net
 http://joind.in/3422
 auroraeosrose@gmail.com
 IRC – freenode – auroraeosrose
 #php-gtk #coapp
Questions?