My new favorite moodle forum

is...

Hardware and performance

Why?

Because I found after many years of supporting/administering moodle, a lot of what is discussed I have deal with.  I perused the forum for able an hr today, replying to a few of the questions with hopefully useful information.  I did learn a thing or two also.

Also, I found a question that made me consider if I should update php.  I am using WAMP v. 2.2 - on all four of the moodle server I support, which runs php 5.3.13.

The reason I encountered this question of php version is because of moodle 2.6, which highlights the OPcache setting in the server configuration setting - Site Admin | Server | Environment.

This OP Cache moodle doc page says you can safely ignore the check message in the environment settings BUT also says IF you can upgrade to php 5.5, and you should, since 5.2,5.3 have know issues, then do it.  If you do upgrade to php5.5, then you should enable the OPcache setting.

Now, Im all for system performance and improvement of memory usage and an overall healthier system, but the upgrading is painful and risky. 

For now I will stay put, but I am thinking about it.  Upgrading WAMP, which would upgrade php, which would allow me to enable the recommended OPcache, is in the craw!