The WordPress Developers Chat meeting took place on May 10, 2023 at 20:00 UTC in the core channel of Make WordPress Slack.
Key Links
Highlighted Posts
Here’s an overview of updates in Trac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. between May 1 and May 8, 2023:
- 24 commits
- 56 contributors
- 46 tickets created
- 9 tickets reopened
- 49 tickets closed
- and 5 new contributors in this period 🎉 Welcome!
- What’s new for developers? (May 2023): Check out this nifty guide to some of the latest WordPress updates, especially suited for extenders or contributors who would like to learn more about developing with WordPress.
- WP Briefing: Episode 55: Happy Anniversary, WordPress!: Take a look back on the past 20 years and how the open source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. community has grown WordPress into what it is today.
- What’s new in Gutenberg 15.7? (03 May): This is of the best places to see what’s new in the plugin 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, as well as what’s in store for the future of Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..
- @webcommsat shared: It is day two of the “#WP20 From Blogs to Blocks” campaign. We have had a request from #marketing to highlight this in #core and encourage more devs to take part too: https://github.com/WordPress/Marketing-Team/issues/220.
Release Updates
- WordPress 6.2.1 RC1 is now available: Help test this first minor release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. candidate (RC One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta).) for 6.2 before next week’s final release. See the post for details on what’s been fixed, and watch the #6-2-release-leads channel for additional updates.
- And a reminder, for those who haven’t submitted feedback for the WP 6.2 release retrospective — @priethor has noted that the original survey deadline has been extended, so please make sure to take this opportunity to help improve future releases!
Maintainers: Component Help Requests
@oglekler indicated a draft patch 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. was ready, and requested contributor involvement with #23348: Add a “Contribute” tab to the about page. @audrasjb agreed with the proposed update, but had a question about some of the languages included in the language options. Olga clarified that those were included in mobile apps, but that clarity was needed to avoid this appearing as a mistake.
Open Floor
PHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 8.x Compatibility
@xavivars asked about PHP supported versions, and documentation surrounding it. He pointed out misconceptions that WordPress wouldn’t work under PHP 8.x due to its “beta support” label, and has only upgraded his sites from PHP 7.4 recently due to this misunderstanding. He then posed these questions (paraphrased):
- How can the PHP versions documentation page better convey that WordPress does work under PHP 8.x without major issues?
- What are the tickets that can help move PHP 8.x support forward, and allow removal of the “beta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. support” tag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.)?
- Do others think this is a problem?
@oglekler related the numerous PHP notices encountered when trying out WooCommerce and PHP 8.2, noting that even if WordPress was almost ready, plugins and themes still posed a challenge. @azaozz agreed that Core functions pretty well up to 8.2, and that plugins were the main reason behind the lack of full support. @clorith added that while Core should not have fatal errors, that the deprecation notices it might throw would be indiscernible from plugin errors to most users.
@sergeybiryukov shared two relevant discussions from last month:
@joemcgill asked if the proposal mentioned in the second link was ever published, and if there was enough support to help make it happen. While not published yet, @hellofromtonya confirmed the post is still planned, and that support for the compatibility strategy has been positive. She also noted that lifting PHP 8.0’s “beta support” label was a target for WordPress 6.3. @clorith suggested that the best place to continue discussion would be the #core-php channel.
@azaozz noted that the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin only supports up to PHP 7.4, and questioned if it could be upgraded to support newer PHP versions. @sergeybiryukov mentioned the relevance of the Tide project, and @jeffpaul confirmed that Tide powers the recently updated PHP Compatibility Checker plugin. He added, however, that Tide in turn relies on PHPCompatibilityWP, which does not yet support PHP 8.x, and shared a discussion link toward adding PHP 8.x support.
To help address @xavivars‘s second question, @ironprogrammer shared links to PHP 8 items in the 6.3 milestone:
@ironprogrammer also pointed at a related topic that might help move PHP support-related discussions forward: #57345: Bump the minimum required PHP version to 7.2. @webcommsat indicated a possible need for #marketing team support to facilitate this work, which was confirmed by @sereedmedia.
Update Error Messages
@pbiron raised the following ticket, #57999: Don’t show error message when there is nothing to update, requesting patch testing and design feedback. He asked if the idea of the ticket was sound, and which of the proposed patches would be preferred.
@oglekler suggested adding screenshots for the proposed patches. @presskopp added screenshots of existing Core behavior, and @pbiron additionally requested before/after shots for each of the patches. @ironprogrammer also suggested pinging the #design channel for awareness.
Screen Options and Help Panel Modernization
@oglekler asked for attention to be drawn to #21583: Improve discoverability and visual design of Screen Options and Help Panels, and remarked that modernizing these panels would also benefit accessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility).
@ironprogrammer referred to @joedolson previously suggesting some shared UI relevance between this ticket and WP Features Notifications, and asked if there had been any discussion about this. @oglekler asked how these were related. Brian provided the link to a recent Notifications feature post, noting that the maintainers should be able to help answer questions. Joe further clarified that the Notifications feature is looking to add another panel in the same vicinity as Screen Options/Help, and called for holistic consideration of how each of these are implemented.
Before moving to the next item, @ironprogrammer pointed out that because Design Team time is often limited, addressing these related WP admin (and super admin) UI User interface concerns at the same time could be a worthwhile collaboration.
“Roll Back” UI String
@kebbet requested feedback and 6.3 milestone consideration for ticket #58282: Change wording where `roll back` is used, asking if more user-friendly terms should be considered. There were several positive emoji reactions to the ticket, and @audrasjb swiftly added it to the 6.3 milestone.
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on May 17, 2023 at 20:00 UTC.
Are you interested in helping draft Dev Chat summaries? Volunteer at the start of the next meeting on the #core Slack channel.
Props @audrasjb and @xavivars for peer review of this summary, and to everyone who participated in the Dev Chat.
#6-3, #6-2, #dev-chat, #meeting, #php-8-0, #summary
