I\'m wondering if PHP has a type of variable in classes that functions like static in other languages. And by that I mean all objects of the same class use the same variable and
I think static is the keyword you are looking for.
And there is nothing that prevents a static property from beeing "updated", in PHP : it is initialized the first time it's set, it keeps it value during the execution of the PHP script, but you definitly can set it to a new value.