Question

Initially I had the habbit of directly writing the php code in the

<?php

?>

region. Those were for simpler sites and lesser traffic.

Now I am in process of developing a bigger site involving a lot of social networking. So would it be apt to leave the code just like that or should I encapsulate it.

Are there any disadvantages or chances of the site crashing if the code is not in any function/class?

Answer 1

The disadvantages a huge regarding:

• code readability: now as well as for the future, for you as well as for any future developers that might work on the project;
• maintenance: changing the same code in 10 different files might mean you forgot to change it in the 11th file;
• verbosity: writing the same stuff tens of times just because the code isn’t centralised / organised into reusable pieces (one can argue that reusable pieces can be achieved by structuring the files and including them);