[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #41191: Create browse happy type notice for PHP versions

[WordPress Trac]

#41191: Create browse happy type notice for PHP versions
-------------------------+------------------------------
 Reporter:  joostdevalk  |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General      |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:               |     Focuses:
-------------------------+------------------------------

Comment (by rklrkl):

 I'll mention here that the Yoast notice about PHP being "out of date" was
 poorly done on several levels:

 * Far too large a notice (15 or so lines!) - should have been a 1 or 2
 line banner with a link to read more about the issue.

 * It was undismissable, which was frankly appalling. If it must re-appear
 at some point, have it appear once a month or when the Yoast plugin is
 updated again.

 * The text made some highly dubious statements like "your version of PHP
 no longer receives security updates" (not true - CentOS backports security
 updates and that's what we are running) and "they [hosters] don't dare to
 do that [upgrade] because they're afraid they'll break your site" (we went
 through a PHP 5.3.3 -> 5.6.31 upgrade recently and it completely broke a
 site in such a manner we had to move that site back to an earlier PHP - it
 was literally unfixable with 5.6.31. So it's not being "afraid" that's the
 issue - we jumped right in there - it's the fact that sites *do* break on
 PHP upgrades).

 I think my main concern here is that no-one's discussing LTS releases here
 like RHEL/CentOS that backport PHP fixes from later releases, but keep the
 base version the same. They'll get hit with messages telling them their
 5.3.3 (RHEL/Centos 6) PHP is out of date when in fact it isn't. Yes, they
 can use the IUS repo (maybe WordPress should have docs on how to upgrade
 PHP on various platforms if they're going to push PHP upgrade notices? At
 least the notices can then link to the appropriate docs page for the
 platform), but the IUS repo is what broke one of our sites, so it's not a
 guarantee at all that things will work after an upgrade.

--
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/41191#comment:14>
WordPress Trac <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/>
WordPress publishing platform