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

Update PHP Page

We first discussed the “Update PHP” page content/layout.

@AlexDenning confirmed that work is being done on the page by @Jayman and him. He’ll send updates as they happen.

WSOD Protection

We then moved on to discuss progress on #44458 – Catch WSODs and provide a means for recovery for end users.

• We collected thoughts about reframing the project from “Servehappy” to “Health Check Project”. This led to a lot of questions about what further changes this would allow that wouldn’t be covered by the “Servehappy” name. We could come up with a few examples, like:
  • helping people update their plugins & themes
  • keeping CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. up-to-date
  • keeping MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. up-to-date
  • organizing “Update Bars” at WordCamps & meetups
• Then we discussed timing and whether we’re on track for 5.0. Basically, our changes can be merged/backported as soon as possible with the caveat that the following requirements need to be met first:
  • the “Update PHP” page needs to be reworked
  • the WSOD protection needs to be in place
• We discussed the types of errors that the WSOD protection catches. The current proof-of-concept only catches PHP parse errors, but we can certainly catch other types of errors, provided we know without fail how to deal with them. @schlessera will set up a document to examine the possible errors and determine which ones to catch.
  We cannot simply catch all fatals unconditionally, as we wouldn’t know what to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. from load to make the site work again.
• @flixos90 has created tickets to port the “Requires PHP:” headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. tagtag 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.) to themes: #44592 & #meta3718.

Post-Meeting

Link to the document discussing the different types of PHP errors to catch: https://www.notion.so/brightnucleus/WP-Sandbox-88738b62e9e947a7aeb8271d958a5497

Next week’s meeting

• Next meeting will take place on Monday, July 30th, 2018 at 15:00 UTC in #core-php.
• Agenda: Continue discussion on the avoiding WSODs in PHP.
• 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, #meta3718, #php, #servehappy, #summary