Is PHP 5.3 faster than PHP 5.4 5.5 or 5.6?

At Website World, we design and host our websites and have done so since day one in the 1990’s. Recently, Google has placed an emphasis on what they refer to as U.E. or user experience. Simply put, Google realizes that it is important to direct it’s users to web sites that load quickly and work on mobile, tablet and desktop operating systems.  Many web design companies are clueless regarding the server administration and/or don’t care. Most clients are focused on the aesthetics of the site, and don’t even realize the site may be loaded on an inferior web server that is 3-4 times slower than an optimized machine.

Recently while while upgrading wordpress sites to the latest versions of PHP, I realized something disturbing. The server response times for PHP 5.4, PHP 5.5 and PHP 5.6 were over double that of PHP 5.3. This blows my mind and really reflects on the clueless mindset at some of the biggest software development companies. So if you are wondering if PHP 5.4 is faster than PHP 5.3 the answer is a definite no!

PHP 5.3 vs PHP 5.4

 Bottom line, it matters how quickly your site loads and the culprit can be a number of issues including WordPress plugins, PHP script errors, server hardware, DNS errors, the list is practically endless. It is important to test your site as seem below to make sure it stands up to your competitors!