[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #33381: Strategize the updating of minimum PHP version.

[WordPress Trac]

#33381: Strategize the updating of minimum PHP version.
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 Reporter:  alexander.rohmann                    |       Owner:  jorbin
     Type:  enhancement                          |      Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  Awaiting
Component:  General                              |  Review
 Severity:  normal                               |     Version:
 Keywords:  needs-codex dev-feedback 2nd-        |  Resolution:
  opinion                                        |     Focuses:
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Comment (by jdgrimes):

 Replying to [comment:122 seancjones]:
 > Not sure what you mean about "still a way from the point where we could
 do the yellow vs green though".  Colors/graphs of any kind are a very,
 very good teaching tool. I understand not wanting to make someone feel
 panicked if they're "Yellow" and maybe just have "green" and "red", or
 something equivalent UX people like.
 >
 > But people do NOT read, they DO look at graphs.

 I agree that when we present this information to users, that this is a
 good way to do it. I'm just cautioning that if we are talking about
 presenting this to everybody within the admin panel, the core devs are
 going to be very hesitant to do that. Trust me, I've memorized all of the
 talking points. :-) I think that if they will agree to pursue educating
 users about this at all, they'll want to test the waters first. (And
 really, it would be easy to get this wrong and end up scaring people, so
 that's a good thing.) I like @alexander.rohmann's idea of eventually doing
 something similar to browsehappy as well. I just think that if we try to
 jump in with both feet, the core devs will just try to shut down the whole
 education idea.

 As far as the parallel between this and browsehappy goes, note that folks
 will be quick to point out that one difference is that many users actually
 know what their browser is, what it does, and most of them can update it
 (actually, not all though). But in this case, many users know nothing
 about PHP, what it does, and they don't have any control over what version
 they are running. I think though that as far as that last point, users are
 probably gaining more control over what PHP version they are running.
 Possibly most of the remaining users are on crummy hosts and don't have
 any control though.

 This isn't to argue against the idea, just to prepare you for what has
 been said about the idea before. I think that before the core team and the
 support team are ready to OK something like this, they're going to want
 some proof that it is feasible and worth the effort. Which is why at this
 point we'll probably have to thing minimalistically in regard to scope
 (how many users are exposed to whatever we come up with), though I guess
 really that doesn't have to necessarily cramp the method that is
 used—something like brosehappy is one good idea, but probably only shown
 to the users running the very oldest PHP version (5.2).

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/33381#comment:124>
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