does FastCGI work well with PHP? It seems that some people running Ruby on Rails have problems with FastCGI, but is it fine with PHP?
Lighttpd uses FastCGI by default for PHP, as the only other option is to use CGI, and it's working flawlessly.
We running our internal intranet application using PHP and lighttpd using fastcgi and it works without problems.
Find a good tutorial here (Linux): http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/lighttpd-php-fastcgi-configuration.html
I use FastCGI (through php-cgi) with Cherokee for PHP and it's just grand. No issues.
I would definitely recommend installing xcache at the same time. The performance boost will blow your socks into next week.
I've just seen you asking about Apache in one of the comments. I don't know why you'd choose FastCGI over mod_php. The performance difference would be almost invisible but I'm certain mod_php would be slightly faster (and a ton more simple to set up).
Well I genuinely thought that was the case. And then I read this: http://www.gnegg.ch/2006/08/mod_php-lighttpd-fastcgi-whats-fastest/
And it looks like Apache+FastCGI is faster than Apache+mod_php. Odd.