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News feed on php.net keeps breaking

Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 4:23 pm
by Ambush Commander
I'm attempting to write a patch for their encoding/entitying woes (the RSS feed is currently broken due to a stray ampersand). Things just keep getting better.

1. News entries are stored in-line index.php
2. distribution's zips are checked into the repository: if you want to check out phpweb/, you'll have to download them all
3. RSS is a hack. A stupid bloody hack.

Hrm... and we wonder why 5.1.3 was such a fiasco.

Re: php.net website is so poorly managed

Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 10:36 pm
by Roja
Ambush Commander wrote:I'm attempting to write a patch for their encoding/entitying woes (the RSS feed is currently broken due to a stray ampersand). Things just keep getting better.

1. News entries are stored in-line index.php
2. distribution's zips are checked into the repository: if you want to check out phpweb/, you'll have to download them all
3. RSS is a hack. A stupid bloody hack.

Hrm... and we wonder why 5.1.3 was such a fiasco.
I'm not sure if you know, but I'm one of the contributors that helps maintain the php.net website. Its a volunteer effort, and we're only a few people strong. We try to do our best, and its not always good enough to please all 3 million visitors.

This is constructive criticism, feel free to be more positive in your postings. If you'd like to affect positive change, your post should be positive in tone. Negativity attracts more negativity.

With that out of the way, this week coming up I'll be committing my first changes to the php.net website, and it fixes the encoding issue, along with a number of other html compliance issues.

I don't understand what you mean, specifically, with #3, so please - be more specific so I can affect positive change.

And yes, distributions are checked into the repository - and notably in a seperate portion. Notable because generally, I don't do much with that portion of the website. The release team handles that.

Your comment about issues with 5.1.3 belongs directed at the release team, and has already been voiced (extensively) and responded to (extensively) on the internals mailing list.

Hope that helps.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 3:24 am
by alvinphp
I for one appreciate PHP.NET as it lets me not have to remember any of the PHP functions! I just look them up when I need them.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 11:20 am
by alex.barylski
I don't think he said anything about *not* appreciating PHP.net....just that the environment isn't ideal...

I'll agree...I've seen better...but thats free for you :)

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 11:39 am
by RobertGonzalez
I'd agree also that the php.net website has a few shortcomings. But if I had to choose between the development turning out a more robust, stable version of PHP or making the website pretty, well, do I even need to finish this...

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 12:50 pm
by Roja
Everah wrote:I'd agree also that the php.net website has a few shortcomings. But if I had to choose between the development turning out a more robust, stable version of PHP or making the website pretty, well, do I even need to finish this...
Its not a choice between the two. Two very different teams working on each. I'm happy to improve the situation, but AC needs to be more specific when he replies.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 1:27 pm
by RobertGonzalez
Maybe I should say this...

If I can find what I am looking for on the site, I am fat and happy. I will probably never use it as a barometer for my HTML or CSS compliance (after all, I have w3c) so if the site can continue to allow me to find the informatio that I need and the downloads I want, I won't complain about it or how horribly non-compliant it might be.

Of course, when Roja takes the site to the next level, I will be one of the first users to pat him on the back and offer an on-line high five. Until, keep up the good work Roja, and I am pleased as can be with the current php.net web site.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 2:21 pm
by Ambush Commander
This is constructive criticism, feel free to be more positive in your postings. If you'd like to affect positive change, your post should be positive in tone. Negativity attracts more negativity.
Sorry about that. (I just was surprised at my find for such a popular site). The comment about 5.1.3 was also a bit inappropriate too, considering that they are definitely managed by different teams. Ulp. :oops:
RSS is a hack. A stupid bloody hack.
I don't understand what you mean, specifically, with #3, so please - be more specific so I can affect positive change.
What I mean by that is the RSS feed is located in an indeterminate place and parses the PHP file in order to generate the feed. Something more intuitive would be an array of news items passed to the RSS feed generator (which would also be easy to find).
And yes, distributions are checked into the repository - and notably in a seperate portion. Notable because generally, I don't do much with that portion of the website. The release team handles that.
This is just my frustration at attempting to check out the directory and discovering that there's a bunch of huge tarballs. How do you exclude directories during a CVS checkout?
With that out of the way, this week coming up I'll be committing my first changes to the php.net website, and it fixes the encoding issue, along with a number of other html compliance issues.
Looking forward to it. As of right now, the RSS feed still is in a broken state (see Bug 37512 which has a patch that needs to be committed).
I'm not sure if you know, but I'm one of the contributors that helps maintain the php.net website. Its a volunteer effort, and we're only a few people strong. We try to do our best, and its not always good enough to please all 3 million visitors.
I didn't know. ::bows head in respect::

Sorry. It was an "on the spur" thing. I appreciate php.net's documentation immensely, and I still rely on the php.net to tell me when a new version of PHP is out.
If I can find what I am looking for on the site, I am fat and happy. I will probably never use it as a barometer for my HTML or CSS compliance (after all, I have w3c) so if the site can continue to allow me to find the informatio that I need and the downloads I want, I won't complain about it or how horribly non-compliant it might be.
The problem is when you have XML based languages like RSS which are very strict. Firefox refuses to parse malformed XML.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 2:31 pm
by alvinphp
Everah wrote:If I can find what I am looking for on the site, I am fat and happy.
Same here and I never have a problem finding what I need on the site.

Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 5:01 pm
by neophyte
I love php.net. It's my friend ;)