What are some best practices for optimizing webpage loading times using PHP and other technologies?

One best practice for optimizing webpage loading times is to minimize the number of HTTP requests made by combining CSS and JavaScript files into single files. This reduces the amount of time it takes for the browser to fetch resources from the server. Another practice is to enable gzip compression on the server to reduce the size of files transferred over the network, leading to faster loading times.

// Combine CSS files into a single file
function combine_css_files($files) {
    $combined_css = '';
    foreach($files as $file) {
        $combined_css .= file_get_contents($file);
    }
    file_put_contents('combined.css', $combined_css);
}

// Combine JavaScript files into a single file
function combine_js_files($files) {
    $combined_js = '';
    foreach($files as $file) {
        $combined_js .= file_get_contents($file);
    }
    file_put_contents('combined.js', $combined_js);
}

// Enable gzip compression
if (!ob_start("ob_gzhandler")) ob_start();