[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #40934: Allow PHP version requirements for plugins & themes

[WordPress Trac]

#40934: Allow PHP version requirements for plugins & themes
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 Reporter:  joostdevalk     |       Owner:  joostdevalk
     Type:  task (blessed)  |      Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  4.9
Component:  Plugins         |     Version:
 Severity:  normal          |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  dev-feedback    |     Focuses:  ui, administration
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Comment (by joyously):

 I've been going through the motions of this manually, because I have
 several client sites that I need to move to a new host. So I ran the PHP
 Compatibility plugin targeting PHP 7 on each site, and they each have
 several plugins that have warnings for PHP 7 and some with errors for PHP
 7. I think this will be a typical scenario, because plugins that are no
 longer supported or just haven't had updates show no indication of that in
 the plugin list. I was unable to get to some of the plugin's pages on
 wordpress.org because older plugins have a different URL (with /extend/ in
 it), and the plugin search will not show plugins older than 2 years. I
 think this is a bad user experience all around. All I wanted was to get to
 each plugin's support forum, but I had difficulty doing that with older
 plugins (which work fine, but haven't been updated -most don't need it).
 Just to note: I posted the results to about 25 plugin support forums
 yesterday (this is from 8 sites), and already received replies saying
 "that error is not a problem", "I'll fix it later", "thanks, but busy".
 Plugin authors will need incentive to do something...

 Creating new fields in the readme for PHP version won't help with the
 older, unchanged plugins. Would there need to be something done for the
 ones that do not update to supply a value?

 Anyway, if I had been a non-technical user and seen the WP message that I
 should update to PHP 7 and followed it blindly, I would have ended up with
 errors I wouldn't know how to fix, caused by plugins that I can't find the
 plugin pages for.
 One of the plugins was interesting, because when I searched for it, it did
 not show, but a similar plugin did (mentioned the older plugin name). The
 author coded a nice transition from the old to the new (read the old one's
 settings and disabled that value in old plugin but old plugin was still
 active). I was able to switch to newer with no hassle at all.

 I didn't see it on the attachments, but wouldn't it make sense to show the
 user the PHP version that the site is currently running, somewhere on the
 plugin page? I wouldn't want it to be hard to find, like the current WP
 version is.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40934#comment:41>
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