WordPress on HipHop

As soon as FaceBook releases the source code of HipHop I’ll do some testing on whether it works at all. And if it Does, how fast does it work?

Just keep in mind that HipHop will not magically accelerate your SQL queries and will, in no case give you the performance of using Cached Static HTML.

Preliminary estimation (by grepping the use of eval) indicates that it does look promising:

foo@bar:/var/www/hiphopphp.org$ grep -r eval\( . | grep php
./wp-admin/includes/class-pclzip.php://      eval('$v_result = '.$p_options[PCLZIP_CB_PRE_EXTRACT].'(PCLZIP_CB_PRE_EXTRACT, $v_local_header);');
./wp-admin/press-this.php:              var my_src = eval(
./wp-admin/press-this.php:                      var my_src = eval(
./wp-admin/press-this.php:                                                      eval(data);
./wp-admin/import/blogger.php:                                          eval('this.status='+text);
./wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php:eval(function(p,... [CUT]
./wp-includes/class-json.php: * Javascript, and can be directly eval()'ed with no further parsing
./wp-includes/functions.php:            if ( doubleval($bytes) >= $mag )
foo@bar:/var/www/hiphopphp.org$

NOTE: This does not cover any popular plugins, some of which might be using eval.

The very first post – looking for help

On February 2nd 2010 FaceBook announced that they’re open sourcing a novel method for accelerating PHP applications. While the method in question could be talked about a lot, I’m going to leave that for others:

• http://www.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=358
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HipHop_(computing)

After the announcement had been I made I went domain shopping and got myself hiphopphp.org . Like for most of my domains I’ve really got no use for it (some collect Stamps, I collect Domains I suppose).

A few days after the announcement I got an idea that I’d set up  a blog to announce what works with HipHop and what does not, providing tips on how to make a certain functionality work, etc. This means popular software such as WordPress, Drupal, eZ Publish, Vanilla Forum, Small Machines Forum and the likes that under certain conditions could really benefit from HipHop.

The acceleration method used is complex and there will undoubtedly be a lot of issues with the Software around. And at the moment it is also compatible with PHP 5.2, so all 5.3 goodness is not available. No GOTO.

I’m a realist and realize that I will not have the time to make this blog relevant. So if you’re interested in participating – feel free to drop me a line at hiphopphp@gmail.com