PHP adoption awereness

[daveloodts]

Probably these types of campaigns would not be allowed by the Leadership team, as PHP adoption and awereness is never been high on the priority list.

But still: it is time. We need to talk about this, don't postpone it again.

I want to explain the problem for the non-tech people here.
PHP7.4 is now the most used version that WordPress sites uses, also 8.0 is popular.
Both versions are end of life, which mean: no updates, no maintenance, hardly security updates,
Check this here: https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
One.com updated their servers from 7.4 to 8.0. They gave a 3-weeks notice upfront, still thousands of (old) WordPress sites crashed.
PHP is and was a nice code language, as it was very very forgiven on code mistakes.
From 8.3 and certainly 9.0 forward, that forgiveness is dropped.
All PHP experts shouting for a long time that the Leadership team has to create more awereness.
And how the Leadership thinks about this topic, it just drips down to their users. A lot of plugins in the rep are not written by good developers.
We can be so proud about our 60K of plugins, when PHP8.3 or 9.0 will be forced upon WordPress users, we will see a reputation-damage that will be quit unseen.
And sadly, it's not the first time those same PHP experts ringing the bell. During PHP5 to PHP7, there was this same lackness. Thankfully, PHP7 was genourisly forgiven.

Personally, i honestly believe this is the biggest challenge of WordPress in the next 2-3 years.
Not accesibility, not blocks, not translations, not full site editing, not community-stuff... cause if PHP8.3 or 9.0 comes around and crashes your site, that's it. All the rest doesn't count when a site crashes...

In the recent years, there are more and more talks and video's around making your site and plugin PHP compatibile.
But the importancy of that to the broader audience is very underestimated so far.

So, it is for sure a good reason to do a campaign here.