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. And we’ll cover where you can host your code once it’s ready. If you’re interested in attending this talk, a passing familiarity with the command line helps, but isn’t a hard requirement.

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

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

4. @boogah

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

6. I was pushing HHVM
Hard

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

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

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

10. Legacy PHP bad

11. But I was being myopic

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

14. But PHP is PHP

15. PHP 7 is PHP
on steroids

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

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

18. All these numbers are
pretty awesome

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

20. They have ceased to be

21. Why should anyone give a !?

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

23. The futch

24. vagrantup.com

25. Vagrant creates & configures
virtual development environments

26. This means
less yak shaving & more working

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

28. There is another

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

30. HGVgithub.com/wpengine/hgv

31. Built by WP Engine
for our Mercury platform

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

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

34. Installing HGV is easyish

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

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

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

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/

39. Just import your site
and see what breaks

40. PHP 7 & WordPress
boogah.org/php7wp

41. Switching your environment
is a piece of cake

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

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!

44. Force your site to PHP 7
service nginx restart

45. Questions?