PHP invites beginners to insert complicated scripts and database queries in their sites, while possessing only superficial knowledge of how the internet runs. I often read this and think of my own web experience: I felt that I was able to create anything (because I believe that you can materialize ANYTHING if you are creative, determined and patient enough) but I was not a good PHP builder.

So I began to read manuals, magazines and PHP forums around the web in search of background information. How could I optimize my portal? It began to get heavier from week to week with my new features based on queries that made my sites slower and slower (maybe not for those on ADSL, but at any rate I started to get the feeling that things could be optimized by applying some golden rules).

Now I have got a whole collection of these rules and I thought that they could be useful for everybody who writes pages without being a highly skilled web builder. I divide them into eight sections: