Delete "General Information" page in FAQ, and improve "Found A Problem?" box

Mailing Lists php.doc
1

Hi all,

While looking for sources for the history section of the PHP article in Wikipedia, I stumbled on this page: https://www.php.net/manual/en/faq.general.php

Although it has had a handful of cleanup edits, most of the content is out-dated, redundant, or both:

- "What is PHP?" - out of date copy from the Preface of the manual; the homepage has a slightly different version, as does the Introduction page

- "What does PHP stand for?" - this is also explained in both the Preface and the Introduction; the explanation of recursive acronyms and link to Wikipedia page are nice for the curious, maybe they could go in the Introduction (there's also a link to the homepage of FOLDOC, where there's a short definition of "recursive acronym" written two months before PHP 1.0 was released)

- What is the relation between the versions? - dates from when people needed to understand how PHP 3 differed from PHP/FI 2.0; there is an entire section of the manual about PHP's history, and pages about supported and unsupported versions

- Can I run several versions of PHP at the same time? - refers to an "INSTALL" file which no longer exists; there's an entire section of the manual about different ways to install it

- I think I found a bug! Who should I tell? - talks about the "PHP Bug Database", with the link going to the GitHub Issues page because it uses a shared entity &url.php.bugs;

I suggest deleting this entire page.

The bug reporting is the only thing I can't see covered better elsewhere. On the other hand, every page of the manual has a prominent "Report a Bug" link which is actually for reporting a *documentation* bug.

I suggest adding a second line to this section for problems with PHP itself:

Found A Problem?
With this manual: Learn How To Contribute • Submit a Pull Request • Report a Bug
With PHP itself: Learn How To Contribute • Submit a Pull Request • Report a Bug

The existing "Report a Bug" link also goes directly to the "blank issue" page, rather than the reporting templates - it should be e.g.

instead of

Thoughts?

--
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]

2

On 17 September 2025 21:37:01 BST, "Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]" <imsop.php@rwec.co.uk> wrote:

Hi all,

While looking for sources for the history section of the PHP article in Wikipedia, I stumbled on this page: https://www.php.net/manual/en/faq.general.php

(snip)

I suggest deleting this entire page.

I don't think thats wise, as that means the URL will be gone, unless we also add a redirect.

cheers
Derick

3

On 17/09/2025 21:50, Derick Rethans wrote:

I don't think thats wise, as that means the URL will be gone, unless we also add a redirect.

Would that be such a great loss? Is learning that PHP 3 is "a lot nicer" than PHP/FI 2.0 more useful than seeing a 404 page?

Is there content you think is worth keeping? Or content that you think should be reachable on that URL, but isn't?

--
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]

4

On 17 September 2025 22:39:24 BST, "Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]" <imsop.php@rwec.co.uk> wrote:

On 17/09/2025 21:50, Derick Rethans wrote:

I don't think thats wise, as that means the URL will be gone, unless we also add a redirect.

Would that be such a great loss? Is learning that PHP 3 is "a lot nicer" than PHP/FI 2.0 more useful than seeing a 404 page?

Is there content you think is worth keeping? Or content that you think should be reachable on that URL, but isn't?

<https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI&gt;

There is enough breaking of the Web already going on. We shouldn't be part of that.

cheers
Derick