Question

I’ve just set-up my server to allow php to be parsed within .html extension. This all works fine but, are there any reasons why I should not do this? There is lot’s of documentation about how to set it up but, none of them go into any detail as to whether it’s a good/bad thing or makes absolutely no difference.

I could just create php pages but I’ll be using such a small amount of php code (header, menu, footer include) that I don’t really see the point. I’ve heard that parsing html pages as php can be a little slower, if so, how much slower, and is it significant enough of a problem to be concerned about.

Thanks, Jonny

Answer 1

No, PHP is smart enough not to parse the part of the code that is not PHP.

But you may hit other problems instead, such as:

• lower maintainability (eg. you will need to look into the code to see what language is that),
• if you ever miss .htaccess (or other place where you define .html files as PHP scripts), you will expose your server-side code,
• you may miss the fact that your .html files contain PHP, after you look at your site some time later,
• etc.