On PHPMaster.com today Callum Hopkins has written up an introduction to the php.ini, the heart and soul of any PHP installation. With configuration options for just about everything, it can be confusing. This tutorial hits some of the highs and most commonly updated settings.

Anyone who has a server using PHP has undoubtedly heard of php.ini - it's the configuration file used to control and customize PHP's run-time behavior. It provides a simple way to configure settings. [...] In this article I’ll give an overview of some important settings I believe you should be concerned with when tweaking your own php.ini file.

The tutorial's broken up into a few different topics:

• the PHP engine
• Short tags
• Output buffering
• Automatic headers and footers
• Handling errors
• Time zones