This is just a notice to let everyone know that the first PHP 5.3.1 release candidate has been released.  For those of you who use cPanel/WHM, this means that you are one step closer to having out-of-the-box PHP 5.3 support.  On cPanel’s forums, a member of cPanel Quality Assurance said cPanel would most likely wait until the stable release of PHP 5.3.1 before unleashing it into EasyApache for a quick, painless install on cPanel/WHM-administered servers (see post by cpanelkenneth here). For a list of fixes in 5.3.1, visit the PHP changelog.

With the release of PHP 5.3, there were many performance increases with some tests confirming a 20% boost for certain applications, though most were between 5-10%.  This should make the web a better place for those of us who upgrade.  (FYI:  I tested a lot of my PHP scripts, and none so far have had compatibility issues.)