So here's one for you. Any idea on a way to shorten the time it takes to connect to a MySQL database? The reason I'm wondering is because I find that just connecting to the DB adds just over a second to the rendering of the page and that seems a bit long considering Apache and MySQL is running on the same machine and the mysqli_connect is connecting to localhost. It's just such a shame when the connection takes a second while any query I end up doing won't add any significant amount of time to the render/load time. Any ways to shorten the time it takes to open a connection?