Bits & Brews

Stories about PHP, WordPress, web development, debugging, security, and lessons learned from real projects.

Posts

OPcache, explained for people who have never turned it on - What OPcache keeps in memory, the five settings that matter, why validate_timestamps changes your deploy, and how to check the hit rate.
Symfony 8: what changed, and should you upgrade? - Symfony 8 requires PHP 8.4, moves configuration to PHP array shapes and enforces return types. What that means if you are running 6.x or 7.4 today.
Composer without the myths: keeping PHP dependencies sane - Lock files, update versus install, version constraints, and the audit command nobody runs. A practical routine for keeping dependencies boring.
PHP 8.5 in practice: the features you will actually use - The pipe operator, clone with new values, array_first and array_last, and a fatal error backtrace. What is worth adopting from PHP 8.5, and what can wait.
PHP tips that save me time every week - Seven small PHP habits that prevent bugs and make code easier to maintain: strict types, typed signatures, and more.
Symfony, plain PHP, or WordPress: how to pick - A practical way to choose between Symfony, plain PHP, and WordPress/WooCommerce, based on what you are actually building.
Welcome to Bits & Brews - A quick introduction to the new blog: what to expect, why I am writing it, and who it is for.