PHP templates and speed

Anon

I'm wondering how much using a template class (such as FastTemplate) will slow down the rendering of PHP pages. I can test this on my own, when I'm the only person looking at the pages, but I have no idea how this will change when it is actually implemented on the live site.

I know that a lot of this has to do with the capabilities of the server, but what I'm wondering is, generally, just how much template systems tend to burden servers as opposed to standard html pages. Any advice will help. Thank you.

Rob

Anon

I haven't had much experience with this, but one thing that you can consider is doing a "nightly build" of the web site. What I mean is limit the use of PHP in static pages. You probably don't need PHP to rerender every page in realtime each time it is requested. Only use dynamic generation for things that need it such as forms, etc. Of course this all depends on how the web site is designed, it might not be possible to do this.
When I get around to redoing my company's intranet web site this is what I am going to do.

Hope this helps,
Keith Batten

Anon

Rob,

Answer to a question like this is a tough one, because there are variety of variables that will affect performance of a server that uses template system.

As you mentioned server specs. If you have multiple CPUs, Rambus RAM or DDR, Seagate Cheatah 15,000 RPM drives in RAID 5 configuration, etc.. then yes, server load won't be a problem even you have lots of hits. If network for you site isn't a bottleneck, consider www.linuxvirtualserver.org -> it provides a great option. or search google on LVS.
Configuration of default software. It is a performance factor. I was playing with homebrewed web-server written in C, and that thing is no more than 20K, and it is blasting fast, because it is so small. Apache is default, so I would check this article http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/97/49/index3a.html?tw=backend (Article is old, yet it can give you some directives)

Also PHP 4.1 was released, and it is supposed to be much better at performance.

Structure of your template. Let's say structure of template is very complex (you can render various appearances of the site with just one function), then yes, performance will go down. Also conceptual wittiness of design can reduce performance.
Caching. I mentioned it before, but there is an Alternative PHP Cache, which is free and can radically improve performance.

http://apc.communityconnect.com

Bottom line -> from my experience I can conclude that template is a great organizational tool, and if written smart they save a lot of time and effort.