With many websites there will come a point where optimizing PHP code, adding memory to a server and tweaking configuration files can’t provide enough optimization to keep the site running smoothly. Even though server technologies are improving rapidly, all of the code processing, compiling and database queries that happen when serving up web content can take their toll on the available resources of the server. Eventually with a growing audience and without the proper solutions in place, the speed at which the server is able to deliver content begins to slow down.

I’m surprised whenever I look at recently written PHP and see folks are still writing their HTML inline with their code. Perhaps it’s because so many PHP tutorials teach this style, or maybe people just aren’t aware of the advantages of separating it out. If you still write this way, feel free to comment on why. I’ll try to explain the advantages of separating it out here. I won’t get into the details of Model-View-Controller programming here, see that Wikipedia article or a blog post I will probably eventually do about it. But for now I will just plead that you separate out your display HTML from your functional PHP code.