WordPress 6.4 PHP Compatibility

Looking for updated information?
Visit the Hosting Handbook Server Environment page.

As we explained in the previous post, for each new version of WordPress, we aim to release an article explaining the compatibility of PHPPHP PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a general-purpose scripting language especially suited to web development. PHP code is usually processed on a web server by a PHP interpreter. On a web server, the result of the interpreted and executed PHP code would form the whole or part of an HTTP response. with the WordPress versions and our team’s recommendation for that specific version.

On this occasion, once again, we will explain the details of compatibility, including “betaBeta Beta is the software development phase following alpha. A Beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs. Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, speed or performance issues, and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. compatible” or “compatible with exceptions”.

So, here you have the compatibility information, this time, for WordPress 6.4.

WordPress’ serverServer A server is a piece of computer hardware or software that provides functionality for other programs or devices. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers. requirements

Even if there are more stable software versions, that doesn’t mean they are the ones WordPress recommends.

This makes WordPress 6.4 requirements:

  • PHP: 7.0+
  • MySQLMySQL MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). MySQL is free and open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.: 5.0.15+
  • MariaDBMariaDB MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. MariaDB intended to maintain high compatibility with MySQL, ensuring a drop-in replacement capability with library binary parity and exact matching with MySQL APIs and commands.: 5.5+

You can read more at Server requirements.

WordPress’ compatibility “at the time”

WordPress 6.4 was released on November 7, 2023, and at that time we had the following components available (stable or security-maintained versions only, and RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. only for informational purposes).

  • PHP: 8.0–8.2, and 8.3-RC
  • MySQL: 5.0–8.1 (LTS versions: 8.0)
  • MariaDB: 10.4–10.6, and 10.10–11.0 (LTS versions: 10.6, and 10.11)

You can read more at WordPress Compatibility.

WordPress and PHP

PHP is a programming language on which WordPress code is based. This language runs on the server, and it is critical to keep it up to date, both for security and functionality.

WordPress supports many versions of PHP, some even obsolete (PHP Compatibility and WordPress Versions).

WordPress 6.4 (coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Team builds WordPress.) is:

  • fully compatible with PHP 7.01, 7.11, 7.21, 7.31, and 7.41.
  • compatible with exceptions with PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2.
  • beta compatible with 8.32.

1 SECURITY ALERT: These versions are not officially maintained by PHP, so they are considered insecure and obsolete versions and should not be used in production. Check with your hostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. provider about the security maintenance they can do.

2 DEVELOPMENT ALERT: These versions are in development, so it’s not recommended to use them in a production environment. PHP 8.3 release date: November 23, 2023.

What “compatible with exceptions” mean?

PHP 8.0

  • Named parameters. WordPress does not support named parameters.
    PHP 8.0 supports optionally calling functions and class methods by specifying the parameter name, instead of calling them on the order of parameters that they are declared.
    PHP, and many other programming languages, support positional parameters: The caller passes the parameters in the same order the function/method declares its parameters.
  • Filesystem WP_Filesystem_FTPext and WP_Filesystem_SSH2 when connect fails.
    An investigation is underway as to why on some occasions the access to the files returns some type of error.

PHP 8.1

  • Not all “passing null to non-nullable” issues have been found.
    In PHP, you can tell a function exactly what type of information it should accept. If you tell a function to expect a certain type of information, and you give it nothing at all (null is like saying “nothing”), then PHP gets confused and gives an error. This problem happens when someone accidentally gives a function “nothing” when the function wasn’t designed to handle “nothing”.
  • htmlentities() et al needs the default value of the flags parameter explicitly set.
    According to htmlentities(), the default for flags for PHP 8.1 was “changed from ENT_COMPAT to ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401”. All use cases for this functionality in WordPress Core are being investigated.
  • Replace most strip_tags() with wp_strip_tags().
    There are rare occasions when the strip_tags() function is passed a null value, which generates a warning that the string is deprecated.

PHP 8.2

What “beta” mean?

PHP 8.3

  • Deprecation notices
    A deprecation notice is not an error, but rather an indicator of where additional work is needed for compatibility before PHP 9.0. With a deprecation notice, the PHP code will continue to work and nothing is broken.

Hosting Team Recommendation

Taking all this into account, the Hosting Team’s recommendations for WordPress 6.4 are as follows (which may differ from the global ones).

  • PHP: 8.1.x or 8.2.x
  • MySQL: 8.0.x
  • MariaDB: 10.11.x

IMPORTANT: These recommendations are intended, primarily, for new installations by hosting providers.

#core, #php

Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-03-06

The next meeting is scheduled with the following details:

When

Next meetings

Where

At #hosting channel on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..

Agenda

WordPress Community

  • WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Team builds WordPress. news
  • WordPress Community news

HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Team Time

  • WordPress Hosting Compatibility
  • WordPress 6.5 Fonts
  • Call for Meeting Hosts
  • More Hosting Team topics

Open Floor

  • Anything not in the agenda

Ideas or suggestions

Anything else? Please leave a comment to add to the meeting.

#agenda, #meetings, #weekly-hosting-chat

Hosting Meeting Agenda – 2024-02-21

The next meeting is scheduled with the following details:

When

Next meetings

Where

At #hosting channel on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..

Agenda

WordPress Community

  • WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Team builds WordPress. news
  • WordPress Community news

HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Team Time

  • WordPress Hosting Compatibility
  • Call for Meeting Hosts
  • More Hosting Team topics

Open Floor

  • Anything not in the agenda

Ideas or suggestions

Anything else? Please leave a comment to add to the meeting.

#agenda, #meetings, #weekly-hosting-chat

Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-02-07

The next meeting is scheduled with the following details:

When

Next meetings

Where

At #hosting channel on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..

Agenda

WordPress Community

  • WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Team builds WordPress. news
  • WordPress Community news

HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Team Time

  • WordPress Hosting Compatibility
  • Team Goals for 2024
  • WordPress Hosting Team event
  • More Hosting Team topics

Open Floor

  • Anything not in the agenda

Ideas or suggestions

Anything else? Please leave a comment to add to the meeting.

#agenda, #meetings, #weekly-hosting-chat

X-post: Incident Response Team: Call for Nominations

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Hosting Tools office hours

When it comes to WordPress hostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web., it’s essential that everything works smoothly, regardless of who’s providing the hosting. The WordPress Hosting Team uses some cool tools to make sure of this. They follow guidelines from the WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Team builds WordPress. Team, which you can find here: WordPress Core Team’s PHPUnit Testing Guide. These tests are super helpful for checking if hosting services are ready for new WordPress updates and if they’ll work well for everyone.

There are two main tools they use: the PHPUnit Test Runner repo and the PHPUnit Test Reporter repo.

The Runner repo is like the engine that runs tests on the hosting service to make sure WordPress will work well on it. It’s like giving the hosting a test drive to catch any problems early.

Then there’s the Reporter repo, which works like a dashboard on WordPress.org. It collects all the test results and shows them in a way that’s easy to understand. This helps everyone see how different hosting services are doing and ensures they’re all ready for the latest WordPress version.

By using these tools, hosting providers can make sure they’re always in sync with WordPress updates. This means fewer surprises and issues for website owners, and a smoother experience for everyone who uses WordPress.

Tools Office hours

Future meetings will be these for the first trimester:

Why everyone plays a role in WordPress Hosting Compatibility

When we talk about making WordPress work smoothly on different hosting services, it’s not just a one-person job. Developers, testers, and hosting providers all have super important roles to play. Here’s why involving everyone matters, and how the “Five for the Future” initiative makes it all possible.

Developers: They’re the builders. Developers write the code that makes WordPress and all its features possible. When it comes to hosting compatibility, they need to make sure their code works well in various hosting environments. This means writing clean, efficient code and being ready to tackle any hosting-specific challenges that come up.

Testers: These are the detectives in the process. Testers dive into new and existing features to locate any bugs or issues. Their job is to think like the end-user and try out every possible scenario to ensure everything works as it should. When they test WordPress on different hosting services, they can spot potential problems before they affect users.

Hosting Providers: These folks offer the space and resources for WordPress sites to live on the internet. They need to stay on top of WordPress updates and ensure their services are optimized for it. By being involved in testing and compatibility checks, hosting providers can promise a smooth, trouble-free experience for website owners.

Now, how does all this teamwork happen? That’s where “Five for the Future” comes in. This initiative encourages companies and individuals in the WordPress community to dedicate 5% of their resources to WordPress development and projects. It’s a way to give back and ensure the platform keeps growing and improving.

Get ready: Join Our Office Hours!

Exciting times ahead! We’re gearing up for an upcoming Hackathon, and we want to make sure everyone’s ready to hit the ground running. To help with this, we’re setting up Office Hours over the following weeks. These sessions are all about getting you prepped and polished for the big event, whether you’re a developer, tester, or hosting provider.

Why Office Hours? Think of Office Hours as your personal prep zone. It’s a space where you can:

  • Ask Questions: Stuck on something? Not sure how to tackle a challenge? This is your chance to ask the experts and get those A-ha! moments.
  • Learn Best Practices: We’ll share tips, tricks, and best practices to make your projects shine. From coding standards to testing techniques, you’ll get the inside scoop on how to excel.
  • Collaborate: Meet other participants, swap ideas, and maybe even form your dream team for the Hackathon. Collaboration is the name of the game.
  • Get Feedback: Have a project idea or a piece of code you’re not sure about? Get constructive feedback to help you refine and improve.

Who Should Join? Everyone who’s planning to be part of the testing! Whether you’re a seasoned developer, a keen tester, or a hosting provider looking to make your services even more WordPress-friendly, these Office Hours are for you.

How to Prepare: To make the most of these sessions, come with your questions, project ideas, and anything you’ve already started working on. If you’re new to the scene, that’s okay too! Just bring your enthusiasm and your willingness to learn.

Cloudfest Hackathon

The WordPress Tools for Hosting Providers project has been selected to participate on March 16-18, 2024 in the CloudFest Hackathon.

For this reason, we have 5 goals for that date.

The first is to leave a stable, functional, and documented version of the test-runner tool so that everyone works on that version. There is a PR #199 that establishes those changes and that base. It has been thoroughly tested and should serve as a basis so that the errors we have previously encountered are not there.

The second is to do the same work that has been done on the test-runner but on the test-reporter so that we also have a more or less stable version to work on the 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 or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party..

The third is to leave documentation of the entire operation of the tools and how to set them up in a development environment, as well as how they can be tested (each tool will need its explanation, since one is best to have a very “hosting” environment, and for the plugin, to have a WordPress development environment of its own).

The fourth, which involves everyone, is to define a list of “what things we want the tools to have.” In principle, there should be two lists, which must complement each other. One that executes the test-runner and allows executing “things”, and the other of the test-reporter that collects all that and displays it on the screen, in addition to planning warnings.

The fifth and last is to say that those who want to come to hack a bit, give a read to Come Hack with Us. We look forward to seeing you March 16-18, 2024, especially to have a great time!

#testing, #tools

Hosting Team Goals for 2024

We want your input on the goals we’re planning for this team for 2024. Our main ideas are to focus on 5 areas:

Testing Project with the HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Tests

  • Continuation Plan: Enhancing our PHPUnit test runner and PHPUnit test reporter by adding new capabilities and moving it to the latest tech stack.
  • Community Involvement: Inviting more hosting companies to participate and share their insights to enrich this project.
  • Improve communication: Contact all the testers to see if the team can help improve the information and feedback.

Documentation Projects

  • Advanced Admin Documentation: Updating and expanding our resources to cover the latest trends and best practices in WordPress administration.
  • Hosting Handbook: Continually refining our handbook to make it an even more comprehensive guide for both new and veteran WordPress hosts.
  • Migrate content: There is some documentation in the Hosting Handbook that should be in the Advanced Administration or, maybe, other handbooks.

The Hosting Event 2024

  • Event Planning: Organizing a hosting-centric WordPress event in June 2024 (before WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe 2024).

CloudFest Hackathon 2024

Hosting Directory

  • Based on the Hosting Survey and the Project Bedrock, we may, once again, try to find a way to create a site or directory for hosting companies that align with WordPress values.

Those are the main ideas for this 2024. Please leave your comments, your implication in any project via the Five for the Future (participating or sponsoring somebody to help with the projects).

#hosting-community

Hosting Team meeting summary 2024-01-24

Last Wednesday we had a meeting, and this is a summary of everything that happened there.

SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. conversation.

Data Liberation

About Data Liberation, maybe the team can help with some documentations. This project is focused on moving around different CMS (mainly), but we can try on helping to move around some technical things like domains, DNSDNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and decentralized naming system for resources connected to the Internet. Most prominently, it translates more readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. or hostings.

Cloudfest Hackathon

The WordPress Tools for Hosting Providers project has been selected to participate on March 16-18, 2024 in the CloudFest Hackathon.

For this reason, we have 5 goals for that date.

The first is to leave a stable, functional, and documented version of the test-runner tool so that everyone works on that version. There is a PR #199 that establishes those changes and that base. It has been thoroughly tested and should serve as a basis so that the errors we have previously encountered are not there.

The second is to do the same work that has been done on the test-runner but on the test-reporter so that we also have a more or less stable version to work on the 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 or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party..

The third is to leave documentation of the entire operation of the tools and how to set them up in a development environment, as well as how they can be tested (each tool will need its explanation, since one is best to have a very “hostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web.” environment, and for the plugin, to have a WordPress development environment of its own).

The fourth, which involves everyone, is to define a list of “what things we want the tools to have.” In principle, there should be two lists, which must complement each other. One that executes the test-runner and allows executing “things”, and the other of the test-reporter that collects all that and displays it on the screen, in addition to planning warnings.

The fifth and last is to say that those who want to come to hack a bit, give a read to Come Hack with Us. We look forward to seeing you March 16-18, 2024, especially to have a great time!

Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.

Just a note on upcoming contributor days:

Team meetings

Future meetings will be these for the first trimester:

  • 2024-01-24 0900 UTC (this meeting)
  • 2024-02-07 1800 UTC
  • 2024-02-21 0900 UTC
  • 2024-03-06 1800 UTC
  • 2024-03-20 0900 UTC
  • 2024-03-27 0900 UTC (tentative, WordPress 6.5 release)

Tools Office hours

Future meetings will be these for the first trimester:

  • 2024-01-31 0900 UTC
  • 2024-02-07 0900 UTC
  • 2024-02-14 0900 UTC
  • 2024-02-28 0900 UTC

Tickets

Hosting Team

General hosting-related tickets

Test tools


Next meetings

The next meetings are scheduled with the following details:

5ftF Participants

Participants on the Five for the Future for this meeting.

#meetings, #summary, #weekly-hosting-chat

Hosting Team meeting summary 2024-01-10

Last Wednesday we had a meeting, and this is a summary of everything that happened there.

Team Goals for 2024

SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. conversation.

Testing Project with the HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Tests

  • Continuation Plan: Enhancing our PHPUnit test runner and PHPUnit test reporter by adding new capabilities and moving it to the latest tech stack.
  • Community Involvement: Inviting more hosting companies to participate and share their insights to enrich this project.
  • Improve communication: Contact all the testers to see if the team can help improve the information and feedback.

Documentation Projects

  • Advanced Admin Documentation: Updating and expanding our resources to cover the latest trends and best practices in WordPress administration.
  • Hosting Handbook: Continually refining our handbook to make it an even more comprehensive guide for both new and veteran WordPress hosts.
  • Migrate content: There is some documentation in the Hosting Handbook that should be in the Advanced Administration or, maybe, other handbooks.

The Hosting Event 2024

  • Event Planning: Organizing a hosting-centric WordPress event in June 2024 (before WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe 2024).

CloudFest Hackathon 2024

About this last…

Some ideas that people asked in the past for the “test-runner”:

  • WP-CLIWP-CLI WP CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. Unit testingUnit test Unit testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code—sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures—are tested to determine whether they are fit for use.
  • test the WordPress + some “blueprint” (some themes and plugins)

and, for the reporter:

  • list “by provider”
  • list by “php-extension” / versions

We will publish soon a more detailed post about the Cloudfest Hackathon project.

WordPress Hosting Team event

Floating ideas:

  • Event about hosting, security, performance, and sustainability.
  • Event date: 2023-06-12 (so, Wednesday before Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. / WCEU)
  • Event time around 0800-1400 (this will leave the afternoon free, so there is time to visit the city or go to WCEU sponsor events)
  • One track, but two kinds of talks: “Community” and “Professional”. “Community” from the community to the attendees, so we can show WordPress projects and how Host can benefit and contribute. “Professional” so professionals can give us some great talks about what they are doing around hosting, security, performance, and sustainability…

When we have some OK from different parts involved, and we can start, officially, we will announce everything and start detailing more. We already have a location in Torino that would be available.

We will probably have 80-100 attendance… so, we may need to limit the people from the same company, so at least, 40-50 different companies can attend… some ideas came in.

Team meetings

Future meetings will be these for the first trimester:

  • 2024-01-10 1800 UTC (this meeting)
  • 2024-01-24 0900 UTC
  • 2024-02-07 1800 UTC
  • 2024-02-21 0900 UTC
  • 2024-03-06 1800 UTC
  • 2024-03-20 0900 UTC
  • 2024-03-27 0900 UTC (tentative, WordPress 6.5 release)

Office hours

Same as we are working on reducing the weekly meetings, the focus for this 2024 is to increase the work on Documentation and Tools, and support for Hosting providers.

We will propose a calendar for those meetings.

Topics:

The idea is to have at least a weekly meeting about one of these topics.

Tickets

Hosting Team

General hosting-related tickets

Test tools


Next meetings

The next meetings are scheduled with the following details:

5ftF Participants

Participants on the Five for the Future for this meeting.

#meetings, #summary, #weekly-hosting-chat

X-post: Call for Mentees & Mentors: Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort #2 (2024 Q1)

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Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-01-10

The next meeting is scheduled with the following details:

When

Next meetings

Where

At #hosting channel on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..

Agenda

WordPress Community

  • WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Team builds WordPress. news
  • WordPress Community news

HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Team Time

  • WordPress Hosting Compatibility
  • Team Goals for 2024
  • WordPress Hosting Team event
  • More Hosting Team topics
    • WP 6.5 and PHPPHP PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a general-purpose scripting language especially suited to web development. PHP code is usually processed on a web server by a PHP interpreter. On a web server, the result of the interpreted and executed PHP code would form the whole or part of an HTTP response. compatibility
    • Team meetings
    • Office hours
    • Tickets

Open Floor

  • Anything not in the agenda

Ideas or suggestions

Anything else? Please leave a comment to add to the meeting.

#agenda, #meetings, #weekly-hosting-chat