Have just tried to install Blackfire Profiling for a PHP project that we are doing having looked at some blogs that show the interface.

Unfortunately, having spent an hour trying to install I gave up. The documentation is so complicated and nothing makes sense; it seems that you need to use Symphony’s composer to be able to profile. Have tried to follow the instructions as best as I can.

If a server engineer with 15+ years experience has troubles then this system is not very user-friendly.

My advice to the Blackfire is simplify the whole installation process; at the moment I have to install things on the server using yum and then login to get server token and then supposedly do something to profile php scripts. Have tried to insert extension to php.ini but to no avail; tried their curl instruction – doesn’t work; tried their PHP SDK – doesn’t work as it requires composer and I have no intention of installing composer.

Even the whole registration process was completely insane – Google+, Github or something else were the only ways of registering; who uses Google+??  Absolutely insane. The other thing is it complained that my browser was too old and didn’t allow me through.

All in All, my review of Blackfire is a generous 3 out of 10. http://www.blackfire.io