Please see my article about the Syntastic Vim Plugin for a better way of syntax checking in VIM.

I find it really helpful to be able to test for syntax errors from within VIM. VIM offers this option via filetype plugins and the :make command. To enable this functionality 2 small config changes are necessary.

~/.vimrc

# Map the make command to CTRL+t 
map <C-T> :w<CR>:make <CR>

~/.vim/ftplugin/php.vim

# Set the make command to execute the PHP syntax checker
set makeprg=php\ -l\ %
# Update error formatting
set errorformat=%m\ in\ %f\ on\ line\ %l

This will only change the make command for .php  files and keep other files unaffected.

Once you changed those 2 files you can hit CTRL+t and you will see if you have any syntax errors in your code:

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected ';' in test.php on line 3
Errors parsing test.php

Note: Executing the syntax test will save the file before testing.