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The previous article in this series focused on phase 1 of the Drupal bootstrap process (DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_CONFIGURATION). This article will now focus on the second phase - DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_EARLY_PAGE_CACHE. The early page cache phase is one that might not accomplish much for some Drupal sites, but for some others can play an important role in improving a site's overall performance by minimizing latency when delivering content to a user's browser. This is accomplished by caching already rendered pages for anonymous users (i.e. haven't logged in). This phase is run early in the bootstrap process as it doesn't rely on any later bootstrap phases (used to gather content and render pages) and its purpose is to keep latency to a minimum - in other words the sooner it executes, the faster a user receives the requested content. There are two forms of caching with Drupal: non-database and database. The early page cache relies on non-database mechanisms, such as file syst...

When investigating a recent rash of spam user registration on my site I began looking through Drupal core to gain a better understanding of its inner workings and how modules could be used to guard against these nuisances. Like every journey there is a beginning, and for me it all started with index.php. This is not a very big file, but it plays a vital role because access to content on any Drupal site (via HTTP GET or POST commands) is all directed to this one file. It starts off simply enough by including a bootstrap PHP file (bootstrap.inc). This file in turn defines several constants referenced throughout the Drupal code base as well as several core utility functions. Then magic begins The drupal-bootstrap function is called with the constant DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL as argument (the function and constant previously defined by the afore-mentioend include file). This function serves to execute a series of phases in order to process all requests coming to the server. How many p...