Can you tell me exactly how long in milliseconds it will take the server to parse a 3KB .php file that contains no PHP code?
It will not parse it at all. In php a php block <?php to ?> is parse by the server. Things in single quotes however are not parse and treated as plain text. For example <?php $var = 'some text'; echo 'My var is $var'; echo "My var is $var"; ?> PHP: The first echo statement would return: My var is $var The second echo statement would return: My var is some text The difference is one string was parsed, the other treated like plain text. In cases where you have a php file extension, php will not enguage the file until it finds a php block of code. And as far as exact milliseconds, that depends on a ton of stuff man. How fast is your server? What version of PHP, on windows or a LAMP stack? How many processors and are the multi core or the older multi stand alone processors? I hope I helped but your question is a bit vague.