What are some best practices for optimizing server-side code in PHP to handle increased traffic on a website?

To optimize server-side code in PHP to handle increased traffic on a website, it is important to implement caching mechanisms, optimize database queries, and utilize asynchronous processing for time-consuming tasks.

// Example of implementing caching mechanism using PHP's built-in APCu cache
$key = 'cached_data';
$data = apcu_fetch($key);

if (!$data) {
    // Perform expensive operation to fetch data
    $data = fetchDataFromDatabase();

    // Cache the data for future use
    apcu_store($key, $data, 3600); // Cache for 1 hour
}

// Use the cached data
echo $data;