In reply to Rick.

Hi Peter,

Why not try a local install with Xampp or Wamp or Mamp or or... well... you get the idea.

Lots of files can be a "good thing" or a "bad thing".

99% of web applications are stateless. That is to say they have no idea whether a user has just went someplace else, shut off their PC, closed the browser .vs. a Mac or PC app which is always aware of state (short of oops, power went out! but can even bounce back in recovery), like Adobe PhotoMotoShop does. ;)

Instead Web apps do little pieces of work. You should see what an enterprise level web app looks like, like the Onsale code I did for their now long since dead third party B2C auction site. As I recall it was on the order of 3000 or 4000 executable files. Imagine eBay! LOL.

Not bringing into memory functions not used is a good thing. On the flip side of the coin having to bring in gobs of files has a cost as hard disks are mechanical and not fast at all compared to caching them in system memory or slapping them on SSD.

For sites where things are gettin' slow with a PHP app thats exactly what I recommend. Put the site on an SSD drive at a host firm and the client will instantly see a wonderful performance increase of 200% or better. If the Database also sits on an SSD Yippie!

The smart cache I mentioned in a few posts does that. Its not just an "output cache" that is to say, when a page is rendered storing it so the next time its loaded it can just be sent out .vs. being rendered all over again until it changes and is invalidated.

Instead, it also allows for a prioritization of input files. Then based on "hits" unto those files it will on its own move them into system memory or keep them on an SSD drive.

Its not brain surgery. Not like I'm a Whiz Wonder. Just a great way to increase performance. The more system RAM we throw at caching input files in RAM the better the performance. The more "output cache files (pages already rendered)" that store unto an SSD drive, the faster. SSD can be an order of magnitude of 200-400% faster than a mechanical hard drive. This is why I tend tell people who are like running a client based firm in web design/development go with a dedicated server at a great host.

Great hosts are flexible. "We want add a 512GB SSD". Thats a TON of space and its an instant performance gain without basically doing a thing especially when the database also sits on it or another SSD. The DB is another bottleneck atop the bottleneck of a mechanical hard disk.

My Windows PC via hard disk takes about 1.5 minutes to get completely booted up with things such as Comodo Internet Security etc etc. On SSD its about 35 seconds.

Those types of benchmarks I also need run. WP on HD .vs. WP on SSD.

Optimally the deal would be: All CSS, All Javascript and all PHP files on SSD as well as the mySQL database. Images dont need eat up space as they are on their own transport http://www.pookeyblog.com/img/meowmeow.jpg

Though obviously if they are page to the user gets rendered faster. But to the application, say Wordpress, that immaterial. What it wants to do is eat as little memory per session as it can and process the code and exit fast as possible. That equates to more sessions it can handle.

An SSD is an instant solution to considerable speed/performance gains. Our cache simply intelligently (sorta stupid really) just watches how many times things are requested and will move files in high demand to RAM memory and swap things in a lower demand over to SSD. Pretty simple.

Most hosts wont allow it. We have some hosting for example over at 1and1 and they went "nope. But if we buy a dedicated server well then...." Phht. Already gots one at Codero.

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In other news while sloshing down some Sam Adams with friends last night we talked about setting up a blog site as some have suggested and it appears that it will happen.

So with that, probably be seeking some authors be that daily, weekly, monthly. Topics wise what was discussed was PHP, Databases, C#, Programming, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Wordpress, .NET, Best of the best websites, wonderful computer software, reviews, using photoshop, gimp, corel draw, general technology chitter chatter and more. Pretty much technology oriented.