[wp-hackers] Quick poll I ran on my site

[Mark Jaquith]

On May 2, 2006, at 8:15 AM, Carson Evans wrote:

> Why upgrade if the version we are on works? Also, some of us are in  
> hosted environments where we aren't in control and/or upgrading  
> would break something else other than WP.

... or break WordPress itself.  I've seen a fair number of PHP 5.1  
users for whom WordPress sporadically shows blank pages (i.e. sends  
200 OK but doesn't send the content).

If PHP 5.1 were backwards compatible, I think more would upgrade.   
But there's a big chicken/egg scenario going on.  No one wants to  
make their web app PHP 5 only, and no one wants to upgrade to PHP 5  
when (a) it might break PHP4 apps and (b) there's no great reward to  
offset (a).

All we can do is work our hardest to make our apps run in PHP4 and 5  
equally well.  And, maybe, for a new app, if it makes development  
sense, go PHP 5 only and hope that your app is good enough to  
convince people up upgrade.
--
Mark Jaquith
http://txfx.net/