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I don't think I need a code example for something as abstract as this question, but I'd be happy to update my question if necessary.

I'm working on my personal website which is mainly for tinkering and experimentation (read: it's for me to have fun with, not to deliver content to the world), but I've got mild best-practices OCD and have been wondering what the best way is to get my CSS to my site. I understand that there is a hierarchy for CSS where linked CSS is least important, then anything on the page within tags, then inline styles as far as precedence. My current mindset for standard HTML/CSS delivery is you normalize/define styles with a linked stylesheet, make per-page changes with tags, and do hotfixes with inline styles.

I'm fairly new to PHP and not sure where to draw the line with using PHP "technology," and that's where my question comes in. Should I use PHP include statements to drop CSS into style tags on my rendered page for everything? Or should I be using the tags? Is there any quantifiable difference between including vs linking? If so, is it just performance or speed based? Is PHP a language specifically designed to interact with the server/do things server-side and therefore should avoid even dealing with my CSS files?

I realize that's a lot of questions and they're not all related to linking CSS, but I want an answer that gives me a better abstract understanding of how I should be using PHP. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Johannes
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Nicholas
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  • Also, I suppose this question applies equally to my javascript files. Include within a script tag, or use the src attribute in my script tag? – Nicholas Jun 29 '17 at 23:57

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I recommend to use the regular HTML <link> tag with a reference to the external stylesheet.

These external stylesheets are cached by the browser, so as soon as you call a second page that uses the same stylesheet, you have an advantage in performance/speed since that code won't be called a second time.

(With a PHP include, the code of the page and of the included php file is compiled into an HTML document which is then sent to the user, so the caching wouldn't be possible there for different pages)

Johannes
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