As a business entrepreneur, one of the many questions that boggles our head nowadays is what is this PHP? – Well for those of you who aren’t yet aware! Have you heard the idea that there is a back-end programming language on which CMS (Content Management Systems) infrastructures are built on. This back-end programming language is termed as PHP. I am sure you must have created your website on WordPress, Magento, Expression Engine and thousands of other such applications, however, what you may have never even realized how these CMS applications are constructed.
With all due respect, a large chunk of appreciation is well versed to PHP, the mother language of all. Over a decade ago, developers observed this major shift of PHP 4 to PHP 5 which revolutionized the back-end development. The language observed a few minor glitches however, with each passing years, six more versions were released up to PHP 5.6. Though, In recent years, PHP played a sonic boom in the market and introduced PHP 7.
Now half of you must be wondering, what happened to PHP 6… Well, not every venture is a success and just like any other failed attempt, PHP 6 significantly crashed. The teams were compelled to do a complete overhaul and send out a totally new and different product on the market, the all new major update, PHP 7.
How PHP 7 Revamps WordPress Websites?
Without a doubt, PHP 7 has now become the new talk of the town. It has gained significant popularity as compared to its previous versions. However, the query still persists among the minds of many WordPress users that how will this motherload is going to perform for websites based on the best CMSs in the world?
Today, more than 27% of the Internet is composed of WordPress. PHP, being the best server-side web development language, creates the foundation on which WordPress stands upon! So what benefits does PHP brings into the world of WordPress? How does PHP affect WordPress speed and performance? Let’s discuss some of the key features how PHP 7 makes a difference into the world of WordPress.
The New Zend Engine
Now you must be thinking what is Zend? Well, Zend is the engine on which the PHP execute actual interpretations of the codes generated on it. It is created using C language and had gone through a number of updates simultaneous to PHP itself. With the transformation and upgrade of PHP 5.x to PHP 7, Zend observed a transformation likewise. Adding the extensible object model and performance enhancements to the existing Zend Engine II, The New Zend Engine contributed itself as they key resource for increasing the performance of PHP 7. With the shift of WordPress to PHP 7, the ultimate performance of WordPress enhanced dramatically.
PHP 7 Performs Much Faster
Let’s face it! We all want our websites to perform fast, efficiently, accurately and effectively. As discussed above, changes in the Next Generation Zend Engine is what contributes to the ultimate performance of WordPress. However, PHP 7 further allows WordPress to reduce memory consumption, ultimately reducing the time for scripting language to process information. As a result, PHP 7 requires less servers for processing content on your website. More requests are catered by server while it runs faster and consequently websites based on WordPress perform much faster than other website competitors on the market.
Commendable Error Handling & 64 bit Support
Handling errors was more like a rocket science in PHP. It’s because before PHP 7, error in your script file would certainly become fatal because it would result in halting the script to perform. Now, with PHP 7, you get a better handling mechanism which throws exception to developers while they code information at the back-end. This enables users to handle problems appropriately and troubleshoot the code when it fails to function properly.
While, on the other hand, 64 bit support has enabled PHP 7 users to allow 64 bit integers in WordPress to be well integrated with other platforms such as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.
Support Anonymous Classes in PHP 7
To catch up with all the latest object oriented languages, PHP 7 added the anonymous classes within the script. This enabled PHP 7 to coherently function with Java and C# which have such classes available in abundance. Although, anonymous classes are not much in use, they can however, perform effectively if they are coded to speed up the execution. And this gives PHP 7 in WordPress an extra edge to make WordPress website a much faster solution for your website.
Abstract Syntax & Group Use Declaration
With the all new PHP 7, you now get Group Use Declaration which itself is a more interesting feature in PHP. You get improved namespace implementations. You can also import as many external classes as you want using less code, All thanks to Group Use Declaration functionality.
Also, the abstract Syntax Tree enables a lot of advantage for users to add as much optimization to their websites as possible. The AST refines the code, use advanced tools to analyze it using static analyzers and perform much more. With, the syntax tree, you can now deliver more sophisticated and less code to users so they can easily tweak around. This feature helps most WordPress developers to fix multiple custom attributes in pre-configured WordPress websites.
Verdict
As my personal observation, I believe these are just the few exceptional performance keys that PHP 7 has to offer to most WordPress users out there. However, these are not limited! Because WordPress is a growing community. More implementations are being contributed to the ever growing populace each day. PHP 7 makes WordPress more lightweight, fast, performance oriented and make your website consume less memory. It handles error in a much cleaner way and gives user an ultimate experience.
If you haven’t experienced the ultimate power of PHP 7 on WordPress yet? Try it now! It’s about time, you should expand your horizons to newer dimensions and start exploring.
