OPcache is a built-in bytecode caching extension for PHP that significantly improves performance by precompiling PHP code and storing it in memory (RAM).

⚙️ How Does OPcache Work?

Normally, every PHP request goes through:

1. Reading the PHP source file

2. Parsing and compiling it into bytecode

3. Executing the bytecode

With OPcache, this process happens only once. After the first request, PHP uses the precompiled bytecode from memory, skipping the parsing and compiling steps.

🚀 Benefits of OPcache

php -i | grep opcache.enable

Or in code:

phpinfo();

📦 Typical Configuration (php.ini)

opcache.enable=1
opcache.memory_consumption=128
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000
opcache.validate_timestamps=1
opcache.revalidate_freq=2

💡 In production, it’s common to set opcache.validate_timestamps=0 — meaning PHP won’t check for file changes on every request. This gives even more performance, but you’ll need to manually reset the cache after code updates.

🧪 When Is OPcache Useful?

OPcache is especially helpful for:

• Laravel, Symfony, WordPress, Drupal, TYPO3

• High-traffic applications

• Large codebases

🧼 How to Clear the Cache (e.g., after a deployment)

Via PHP:

opcache_reset();

Or from the command line:

php -r "opcache_reset();"

🧠 Summary

OPcache is a simple but powerful performance booster for any PHP application. It should be enabled in every production environment — it’s free, built-in, and drastically reduces load times and server strain.

Zero Trust is a security concept based on the principle:

"Never trust, always verify."

Unlike traditional security models that automatically trust internal network traffic, Zero Trust assumes that every user, device, and application must be authenticated, authorized, and continuously monitored — regardless of whether they are inside or outside the network perimeter.

🔐 Core Principles of Zero Trust

1. Verification over Trust
   No one is trusted by default — every user, device, and service must prove who they are.

2. Least Privilege Access
   Users and services only get the minimum access they truly need — nothing more.

3. Continuous Validation
   Trust is not permanent — it’s reevaluated continuously (based on behavior, location, device status, etc.).

4. Micro-Segmentation
   The network is divided into small, isolated zones to prevent lateral movement if an attacker breaks in.

5. Centralized Visibility & Logging
   Every access attempt is logged and monitored — critical for audits, compliance, and detecting threats.

🧱 Technical Implementation (Examples)

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

• Identity & Access Management (IAM)

• Device Posture Checks (e.g., antivirus, patch status)

• ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) as a VPN replacement

• Micro-segmentation via cloud firewalls or SDN

• Security Monitoring Tools (e.g., SIEM, UEBA)

🎯 Why Is Zero Trust So Important Today?

• Remote Work: Employees work from anywhere — not just inside a "trusted" office LAN.

• Cloud & SaaS adoption: Data lives outside your data center.

• Evolving Threat Landscape: Ransomware, insider threats, social engineering.

✅ Real-World Example

Without Zero Trust:

A user logs in via VPN and has full network access, just because they're "inside".

With Zero Trust:

The user must verify identity, device health is checked, and access is limited to only necessary apps — no blind trust.

🧪 Summary

Zero Trust is not a single product — it's a security strategy. Its goal is to reduce risk by enforcing continuous verification and minimizing access. When done right, it can drastically lower the chances of data breaches, insider threats, and lateral movement within a network.

Deployer is an open-source deployment tool for PHP projects — specifically designed to automate, standardize, and securely deploy applications like Laravel, Symfony, Magento, WordPress, or any custom PHP apps.

🚀 What Makes Deployer Special?

• It’s a CLI tool, written in PHP.

• You define your deployment process in a deploy.php configuration file with clearly defined tasks.

• It supports zero-downtime deployment using symbolic links (symlinks).

• It supports multi-environment deployments (e.g., staging, production).

🛠️ Typical Deployer Workflow

Install Deployer via Composer:

composer require deployer/deployer --dev

Generate a config template:

vendor/bin/dep init

Configure deploy.php, e.g., for Laravel:

host('my-server.com')
    ->set('deploy_path', '/var/www/myproject')
    ->set('branch', 'main');

task('deploy', [
    'deploy:prepare',
    'deploy:vendors',
    'artisan:migrate',
    'deploy:publish',
]);

Deploy your app:

vendor/bin/dep deploy production

🔁 What Happens Under the Hood?

Deployer:

• Connects to the server via SSH

• Clones your Git repo into a new release directory

• Installs Composer dependencies

• Runs custom tasks (e.g., php artisan migrate)

• Updates the symlink to point to the new release (current)

• Removes old releases if configured

📦 Benefits of Deployer

Laravel Octane is an official package for the Laravel framework that dramatically boosts application performance by running Laravel on high-performance application servers like Swoole or RoadRunner.

⚡ What Makes Laravel Octane Special?

Instead of reloading the Laravel framework on every HTTP request (as with traditional PHP-FPM setups), Octane keeps the application in memory, avoiding repeated bootstrapping. This makes your Laravel app much faster.

🔧 How Does It Work?

Laravel Octane uses persistent worker servers (e.g., Swoole or RoadRunner), which:

1. Bootstrap the Laravel application once,

2. Then handle incoming requests repeatedly without restarting the framework.

🚀 Benefits of Laravel Octane

RoadRunner is a high-performance PHP application server developed by Spiral Scout. It serves as a replacement for traditional PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) and offers a major performance boost by keeping your PHP application running persistently — especially useful with frameworks like Laravel or Symfony.

🚀 What Makes RoadRunner Special?

✅ Worker-Based Performance

• PHP scripts are not reloaded on every request. Instead, they run continuously in persistent worker processes (similar to Node.js or Swoole).

• This eliminates the need to re-bootstrap the framework on every request — resulting in significantly faster response times than with PHP-FPM.

✅ Built with Go

• RoadRunner is written in the programming language Go, which provides high concurrency, easy deployment, and great stability.

✅ Features

• Native HTTP server (with HTTPS, Gzip, CORS, etc.)

• PSR-7 and PSR-15 middleware support

• Supports:

  • Queues (e.g., Redis, RabbitMQ)

  • gRPC

  • WebSockets

  • Static file serving

  • Prometheus metrics

  • RPC between Go and PHP

• Hot reload support with a watch plugin

⚙️ How Does It Work?

1. RoadRunner starts PHP worker processes.

2. These workers load your full framework bootstrap once.

3. Incoming HTTP or gRPC requests are forwarded to the PHP workers.

4. The response is returned through the Go layer — fast and concurrent.

📦 Common Use Cases:

• Laravel + RoadRunner (instead of Laravel + PHP-FPM)

• High-traffic applications and APIs

• Microservices

• Real-time apps (e.g., using WebSockets)

• Low-latency, serverless-like services

📉 RoadRunner vs PHP-FPM

The .htaccess file is a configuration file for Apache web servers that allows you to control the behavior of your website — without needing access to the main server configuration. It’s usually placed in the root directory of your website (e.g., /public_html or /www).

Important notes:

• .htaccess only works on Apache servers (not nginx).

• Changes take effect immediately — no need to restart the server.

• Many shared hosting providers allow .htaccess, but some commands might be restricted.

• Syntax errors can break your site — so be careful when editing.

Least Privilege is a fundamental principle in IT and information security. It means:

Every user, system, or process should be granted only the minimum level of access necessary to perform its duties—no more, no less.

Why is it important?

The principle of least privilege helps to:

• Minimize security risks: If an attacker compromises an account, they can only access what that account is permitted to.

• Prevent accidental errors: Users can’t unintentionally change critical systems or data if they don’t have access to them.

• Meet compliance requirements: Many standards (e.g., ISO 27001, GDPR) require access control based on the least-privilege model.

Examples:

• An accountant has access to financial systems but not to server configurations.

• A web server process can write only in its own directory, not in system folders.

• An intern has read-only access to a project folder but cannot modify files.

How to implement it:

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

• Separation of admin and user accounts

• Time-limited permissions

• Regular access reviews and audits

🔧 What is Google Apps Script?

Google Apps Script is a cloud-based scripting language developed by Google, based on JavaScript. It allows you to automate tasks, extend functionality, and connect various Google Workspace apps like Google Sheets, Docs, Gmail, Calendar, and more.

📌 What can you do with it?

• Automatically format, filter, or sync data in Google Sheets.

• Send, organize, or analyze emails in Gmail.

• Automatically process responses from Google Forms.

• Create and manage events in Google Calendar.

• Build custom menus, dialogs, and sidebars in Google apps.

• Develop web apps or custom APIs that integrate with Google services.

✅ Benefits

• Free to use (with a Google account).

• Runs entirely in the cloud—no setup or hosting required.

• Seamless integration with Google Workspace.

• Well-documented with many examples and tutorials.

🧪 Example (Auto-fill cells in Google Sheets)

function fillColumn() {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();
  const range = sheet.getRange("A1:A10");
  for (let i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
    range.getCell(i, 1).setValue("Row " + i);
  }
}

🔧 What are Database Triggers?

Database triggers are special automated procedures in a database that are automatically executed when certain events occur on a table or view.

🧠 Example:

Imagine you have a table called Orders, and you want to automatically log every time an order is deleted.
You can create a DELETE trigger on the Orders table that inserts a message into a Log table whenever a row is deleted.

🔄 Types of Triggers:

CREATE TRIGGER log_delete
AFTER DELETE ON Orders
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
  INSERT INTO Log (action, timestamp)
  VALUES ('Order deleted', NOW());
END;

✅ Common Uses of Triggers:

• Data validation

• Audit logging

• Enforcing business rules

• Extending referential integrity

⚠️ Disadvantages:

• Can be hard to debug

• Might trigger other actions unexpectedly

• Can impact performance if overly complex

🛠️ What is GitHub Actions?

GitHub Actions is a feature of GitHub that lets you create automated workflows for your software projects—right inside your GitHub repository.

📌 What can you do with GitHub Actions?

You can build CI/CD pipelines (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment), such as:

• ✅ Automatically test code (e.g. with PHPUnit, Jest, Pytest)

• 🛠️ Build your app on every push or pull request

• 🚀 Automatically deploy (e.g. to a server, cloud platform, or DockerHub)

• 📦 Create releases (e.g. zip packages or version tags)

• 🔄 Run scheduled tasks (cronjobs)

🧱 How does it work?

GitHub Actions uses workflows, defined in a YAML file inside your repository:

• Typically stored as .github/workflows/ci.yml

• You define events (like push, pull_request) and jobs (like build, test)

• Each job consists of steps, which are shell commands or prebuilt actions

Example: Simple CI Workflow for Node.js

name: CI

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: '20'
      - run: npm install
      - run: npm test

🧩 What are "Actions"?

An Action is a single reusable step in a workflow. You can use:

• Prebuilt actions (e.g. actions/checkout, setup-node, upload-artifact)

• Custom actions (e.g. shell scripts or Docker-based logic)

You can explore reusable actions in the GitHub Marketplace.

💡 Why use GitHub Actions?

• Saves time by automating repetitive tasks

• Improves code quality through automated testing

• Enables consistent, repeatable deployments

• Integrated directly in GitHub—no need for external CI tools like Jenkins or Travis CI