Will including unnecessary php files slow down website?

Question

The question might prompt some people to say a definitive YES or NO almost immediately, but please read on...

I have a simple website where there are 30 php pages (e

Answer 1

You should benchmark. Time the execution of the same page with different includes. But I guess it won't make much difference with 30 files.

But you can save yourself the time and just enable APC in the php.ini (it is a PECL extension, so you need to install it). It will cache the parsed content of your files, which will speed things up significantly.

BTW: There is nothing wrong with laziness, it's even a virtue ;)