PHP Meeting Recap – June 4th

This recap is a summary of our last 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 recap continued the discussion from last week (read the recap) about how to prevent pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party installations from happening if the plugin requires a WordPress or PHP version that is not met by the environment (see #43986 for the related ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.).
• First it was discussed how to display the notice to inform the user of the version requirement not being met. @melchoyce had presented several design approaches for it, with the aftermath of last week’s meeting highlighting a mockup that replaces the bottom section of the plugin card with the red notice.

• The majority of voices during the meeting voted for using the above design, mostly for its clear highlighting and available space. Concerns were expressed about not showing specific PHP versions and, more specifically, about hiding the stats about ratings and active installations. The latter are completely unrelated, so the above mockup may need to be adjusted to include the stats as they are displayed on regular plugin cards at this point. This will need to be re-evaluated in the next meeting.
• The other point discussed were the copy to use for the notice, including a link to show to solve the problem. The following copy was agreed on for the two respective issues:
  

  Incompatible with your version of WordPress. Please update WordPress (link to update WordPress).

  Incompatible with your version of PHP. Learn more about updating PHP (link to the Upgrading PHP page).

• The above copy is brief and on point, and contains a clearly-described link as a call-to-action, being much more accurate than the previous “Why” links. It was decided to not include specific WordPress or PHP versions in this notice because these version numbers are more technical and would be unnecessary information for most users. Only the “More Details” modal should provide them. The copy was agreed on to use during the meeting, however with a concern being expressed later about the strict tone resulting of the short length of the structurally incomplete sentence. The following alternative was suggested:
  

  You can’t install this plugin because it doesn’t work with your version of WordPress. Please update WordPress (link to update WordPress).

  You can’t install this plugin because it doesn’t work with your version of PHP. Learn more about updating PHP (link to the Upgrading PHP page).

• It was agreed that this copy sounds better, but it would need to be figured out how to fit it into the small space available. Alternatively, the longer variant could only be used for the notices displayed in the More Details modal. On the other hand, that would make visibility of these seemingly friendlier notices much lower. The copy can likely be finalized in next week’s meeting.
• A problem that was not clearly handled yet is what should happen if both the WordPress and PHP versions are insufficient. In that case, either both sentences could show, increasing the required space further and possibly looking strange due to a single notice showing content that looks like two actual notices. On the “More Details” modal this is not a problem, but it may need a solution on the plugin cards.
• An alternative was suggested to, at least on the plugin card, always only mention one of the two problems, even if both occur. While none of the participants were really satisfied with that approach, they agreed that in such a case the WordPress version issue should take precedence because it is most likely much easier to fix. The discussion on how to deal with both issues occurring simultaneously should be continued once it is clear how to display the notice and what content to use. It may very well be solved in that process as it needs to be considered for both decisions.

While the preliminary decisions made during the meeting are certainly not final, @afragen implemented the state after the meeting in an updated patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. and provided screenshots for it on the ticket, which can help a lot in evaluating the possible approaches in the upcoming meetings.

Next week’s meeting

• Next meeting will take place on Monday, June 11, 2018 at 15:00 UTC in #core-php.
• Agenda: Continue discussion on how to display the notice, with particular attention to maintaining the information currently present on the plugin card and accounting for the possibility of both versions being insufficient. The concrete copy to use should only be discussed if there is enough time left at the end.
• 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, #summary