PHP Meeting Recap – April 2nd

This recap is a summary of our previous PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher meeting. It highlights the ideas and decisions which came up during that meeting, both as a means of documenting and to provide a quick overview for those who were unable to attend.

You can find this meeting’s chat log here.

Chat Summary

  • Design feedback was not yet available to review, so this was postponed to next week.
  • Per #41191, @pento will ask the Automattic editorial team to review the wording.
  • @markjaquith brought up that the large amount of text currently in the nag may be too much. Since the PHP upgrade education page already contains detailed information, the nag should be more on point. Key points are:
    • PHP runs your site.
    • Your PHP is outdated.
    • Updating makes your site faster and more secure.
  • @flixos90 suggested to compare the nag with the one from Browsehappy which is way shorter. While upgrading PHP is not trivial, it should be possible to shorten the current copy so that it is only a bit longer than the Browsehappy message. Something like the following may work already:

    It looks like your site is using an outdated/insecure version of PHP. PHP is the programming language that WordPress is built on. To make your site faster and keep it secure, please upgrade the PHP version on your webserver.
    Learn how to upgrade my PHP (link)

  • It’s important to highlight the performance aspect of upgrading, not only the improved security.
  • @afragen shared his proof-of-concept for rejecting plugins that require a higher PHP version than available. While a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. implementation would need to cover much more than the functionality present, it is a good source to start working from, and some of the code or ideas may be reused in the implementation for #40934.

Next week’s meeting

  • Next meeting will take place on Monday, April 9th, 2018 at 15:00 UTC in #core-php.
  • Agenda: Discuss design feedback and wording of the nag.
  • If you have suggestions about this but cannot make the meeting, please leave a comment on this post so that we can take them into account.

#core-php, #php, #servehappy, #summary