Hello fellow programmers,
I was just wondering what makes php work faster, I have a few methods that I always go and do, but that only improves the way I can read it, but how about the interpreter?

Should I include the curly braces when there is only one statement to run?

if(...){
    echo "test";
}
# Or..
if(...)
    echo "test";
=== Which should be used?

I have also found http://beta.phpformatter.com/ and I find the following settings to be good, but are they?

Indentation:

Indentation style: {K&R (One true brace style)}
Indent with: {Tabs}
Starting indentation: [1]
Indentation: [1]

Common:

[x] Remove all comments
[x] Remove empty lines
[x] Align assignments statements nicely
[ ] Put a comment with the condition after if, while, for, foreach, declare and catch statements

Improvement:

[x] Remove lines with just a semicolon (;)
[x] Make normal comments (//) from perl comments (#)
[x] Make long opening tag (<?php) from short one (<?)

Brackets:

[x] Space inside brackets- ( )
[x] Space inside empty brackets- ( )
[x] Space inside block brackets- [ ]
[x] Space inside empty block brackets- [ ]

Tiny var names:

often I go through my code and change $var1 to $a, $var2 to $b and so on. I do include comments at the start of the file to show to me what each letter(s) mean..

Final note:

So am I doing the right thing with the curly braces and the settings?
Are there any great tips that help it run faster?