Way of the Future

With the performance gains promised by HHVM and PHP 7, WordPress site admins are living in pretty exciting times. The PHP world at large is in a proverbial space race, and every WordPress site will (eventually) benefit. But early adopters and folks who manage their own servers shouldn’t be the only ones who get early access to these face melting bumps in speed. In this talk, I’ll be introducing you to things you can do to get your code ready for these next generation hosting environments.

Transcript

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2. I'm Jason Cosper
   I work at WP Engine
   

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3. I created Hipster Ipsum
   I organize the Bakersfield WordPress Meetup
   I maintain the Force Strong Passwords plugin
   

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4. @boogah
   

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5. When I gave this talk
   five months ago...
   

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6. I was pushing HHVM
   Hard
   

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7. The numbers were compelling
   WordPress 4.1.x with 20 concurrent users.
   • Requests per second
   • PHP 5.5: 256
   • PHP 7: 627
   • HHVM 3.7: 666
   • Latency
   • PHP 5.5: 78 milliseconds
   • PHP 7: 32 milliseconds
   • HHVM 3.7: 30 milliseconds
   

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8. PHP adoption rates were depressing
   • PHP 5.3 — 41.4%
   • Released: June 30, 2009
   • End of Life: August 14, 2014
   • PHP 5.4 — 30.1%
   • Released: March 1, 2012
   • End of Life: September 12, 2015
   • PHP 5.5 — 9.3%
   • Released: June 20, 2013
   • End of Life: June 20, 2016
   • PHP 5.6 — 1.5%
   • Released: August 28, 2014
   • End of Life: August 28, 2017
   

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9. And hosts were announcing HHVM support
   • WP Engine
   • DreamHost
   • Pagely
   • SiteGround
   • Kinsta
   • Etc.
   

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10. Legacy PHP bad
    

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11. But I was being myopic
    

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12. Don't get me wrong
    HHVM is still fast
    

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14. But PHP is PHP
    

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15. PHP 7 is PHP
    on steroids
    

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16. Let's take a look
    at some numbers
    boogah.org/55vs7
    

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17. PHP 5.5 vs. PHP 7
    • WordPress (4.3.1)
    • PHP 7 was 2.6 times faster than PHP 5.5
    • WordPress (4.3.1) + WooCommerce (2.4.8)
    • PHP 7 was 1.4 times faster than PHP 5.5
    • WordPress (4.3.1) + bbPress (2.5.8)
    • PHP 7 was 6.6 times faster than PHP 5.5
    • WordPress (4.3.1) + BuddyPress (2.3.4)
    • PHP 7 was 4.7 times faster than PHP 5.5
    

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18. All these numbers are
    pretty awesome
    

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19. However, 67.9% of all PHP sites
    are currently powered by versions
    that should be considered dead
    

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20. They have ceased to be
    

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21. Why should anyone give a !?
    

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22. Nobody builds sites for the past
    You build them for the future
    

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23. The futch
    

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24. vagrantup.com
    

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25. Vagrant creates & configures
    virtual development environments
    

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26. This means
    less yak shaving & more working
    

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27. Varying Vagrant Vagrants
    is the industry standard
    for WordPress development
    

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28. There is another
    

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29. It does PHP 7 & HHVM
    And it was made for WordPress development
    

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30. HGV
    github.com/wpengine/hgv
    

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31. Built by WP Engine
    for our Mercury platform
    

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32. No matter where you host your site,
    you can use HGV to test your code
    

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33. HGV
    • Built with members of the 10up team
    • Work on your code under PHP 5.5, PHP 7 & HHVM at the same time
    • Provision multiple sites using YML files
    • Debugging & benchmarking tools
    • Xdebug
    • XHProf
    • Siege
    • query-monitor
    • debug-objects
    • debug-bar
    

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34. Installing HGV is easyish
    

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35. Prerequisites
    • Git
    • VirtualBox or VMware
    • Vagrant
    • The Vagrant Ghost plugin
    boogah.org/hgv-prereq
    ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
    brew install git
    brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask
    brew cask install vagrant
    brew cask install virtualbox
    vagrant plugin install vagrant-ghost
    

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36. Install
    cd ~
    mkdir vagrant
    cd vagrant
    git clone --recursive https://github.com/wpengine/hgv.git
    cd hgv
    vagrant up
    

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37. While HGV installs, make yourself a drink
    It should only take about 30 minutes
    

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38. Get to work
    • Local file access
    • Use your favorite text editor!
    • [HGV_dir]/hgv_data/sites/[sitename]/
    • [HGV_dir]/hgv_data/sites/[sitename]/wp-content/[plugins|themes]/
    • SSH
    • vagrant ssh
    • phpMyAdmin
    • admin.hgv.test/phpmyadmin/
    

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39. Just import your site
    and see what breaks
    

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40. PHP 7 & WordPress
    boogah.org/php7wp
    

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41. Switching your environment
    is a piece of cake
    

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42. Force your site to PHP 7
    vagrant ssh
    sudo nano -w /etc/nginx/conf.d/www-[sitename].conf
    

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43. Force your site to PHP 7
    Change this:
    cache.php.example.test php;
    php.example.test php;
    To this:
    cache.php.example.test php7;
    php.example.test php7;
    Save your changes!
    

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44. Force your site to PHP 7
    service nginx restart
    

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45. Questions?
    

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