Web site bogging down? Before you decide to throw more hardware at the problem, consider optimizing your stack. We continue our series on tuning LAMP, this time focusing on the Apache Web server and PHP.

For Apache, you'll want to decide between threading and forking -- not necessarily an obvious choice -- then configure the Multi-Processing Module appropriately. You should also be careful about httpd.conf options, with an eye toward optimizing for both performance and security. Finally, we show how to manage persistent connections and balance the compression tradeoff between CPU time and download speed.

As for PHP, we show the advantages of using an opcode cache and of managing system resources through php.ini. Read about it:

• Tuning LAMP systems, Part 2: Optimizing Apache and PHP

Also new this week is our top 10 articles list, which we'll update every month. Look for it in the Spotlight area, here and on the developerWorks Linux zone.

Until next week,
Tom Young, dwnews@us.ibm.com
Linux zone editor