PHP Meeting Recap – April 9th

This recap is a summary of our previous PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 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

  • The design meeting had not taken place at the time to discuss design of the nag, but the topic was discussed later the week, so next week there will be feedback to review. Screenshots of both the expanded and collapsed state of the dashboard widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. are present on the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #41191.
  • Via the Automattic editorial team, an updated version of the copy for the nag was suggested and uploaded as a patch.
  • The suggested changes were met with consent, especially considering the removal of a rather redundant sentence to continue reading and a fragment focusing on the people working on WordPress (as they are not the group the widget is targeting).
  • The new “PHP Upgrade Required” was approved as well. While mentioning the term PHP which may initially be unknown to the site owner, it clearly identifies the problem, and via the word “required” it is a clear call to action.
  • The one sentence questioned was the following:

    The instructions we provide will guarantee a secure, painless update.

    Particularly the word “guarantee” may be misleading as it is impossible to guarantee a painless update process. @nerrad shared multiple alternatives which he also added to the ticket. There was consent that at least “guarantee” should be replaced with “help with”.

  • An important thought that was emphasized again was that, while upgrading PHP is not that trivial, there needs to be a positive attitude and expressions being used about that in order to motivate site owners to proceed. It must not be too euphemistic though – updating PHP is undoubtedly more complicated than updating a browser for example.
  • Except for the one sentence it was agreed that the revised version is more accurate, on-point and in line with the wording used in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. otherwise.

Next week’s meeting

  • Next meeting will take place on Monday, April 16th, 2018 at 15:00 UTC in #core-php.
  • Agenda: Discuss design feedback for the nag, as expressed in their meeting and on the ticket.
  • 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