10 Proven PHP Best Practices Every Developer Should Follow

1. Use PHP When It Fits – Rasmus Lerdorf

Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP, emphasizes that PHP is a tool designed to solve specific web development problems and should not be forced to solve every issue; choose the appropriate language for each task.

2. Multi‑Table Storage for Scalability – Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, explains how separating each blog into its own MySQL table (WordPress MU) improves scalability, allowing WordPress.com to distribute data across thousands of databases and handle massive traffic.

3. Never Trust Your Users – Dave Child

Dave Child advises treating all user‑supplied data as potentially malicious, validating inputs on the client side with JavaScript and adopting a security‑first mindset.

4. Use PHP Caching – Ben Balbo

Ben Balbo recommends implementing caching for high‑traffic, low‑update sites. Common techniques include caching function results, setting expiration times, caching downloaded files, template caching, and using libraries such as Cache_Lite.

Cache function results

Set expiration times

Cache downloaded files

Template caching

Cache_Lite

5. Accelerate Development with IDEs, Templates, and Snippets – Chad Kieffer

Chad Kieffer highlights the productivity gains from using Eclipse PDT (or similar IDEs) together with code templates and snippets, which reduce coding time, errors, and improve debugging.

6. Leverage PHP’s Filter Functions – Joey Sochacki

Joey Sochacki points out that PHP’s built‑in filter_* functions can handle data type validation, URL, email, IP address checks, and special‑character sanitization, simplifying robust input filtering.

7. Use a PHP Framework – Josh Sharp

Josh Sharp argues that frameworks such as Zend, CakePHP, or CodeIgniter standardize code structure, cut development time, and lower the likelihood of bugs.

8. Avoid a PHP Framework – Rasmus Lerdorf

Conversely, Rasmus Lerdorf demonstrates that plain PHP can outperform framework‑based code in raw performance, as shown in his “Hello World” benchmark at DrupalCon 2008.

9. Employ Batch Processing – Jack D. Herrington

Jack Herrington recommends using cron jobs, MySQL, OOP PHP, and PEAR::DB to offload long‑running tasks to the background, adhering to the KISS principle and avoiding memory‑leak risks.

10. Enable Error Reporting Early – David Cummings

David Cummings stresses turning on comprehensive error reporting to catch undefined variables, missing constants, and other subtle bugs, which saves significant debugging time.