NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

Elliotte Harold wrote:
> Suppose I don't want it to be so obvious that I'm using PHP on a site, 
> Or that I just want the freedom to not always use PHP in a given 
> document. Thus I decide to configure Apache to treat all .html files as 
> PHP files.
> 
> How much overhead does this add for the common case when a file only 
> contains static data, no PHP? Would I notice the hit?
> 

As usual, it depends. All pages will be sent to the PHP interpreter 
which parses the file and decides that there is nothing to do and has 
the web server serve the static content. While there may be no 
noticeable difference when calling one page it may come into play when 
you get several thousand hits a minute.

What's so wrong with calling files .htm and .php and handle them 
differently? Although, I can ask the opposite question and come up with 
some good answers as well. I'd take a look as to how busy the site is 
and how much oomph your server box has. Or just try it out and see what 
happens.
I came across several instances where I crafted a page as static, but 
then wanted to add a header and then internationalization based on user 
preference. At that point there isn't a way around PHP. Chances are that 
you will use PHP at some point even for pages that are currently static.

David