CodeWalrus

CodeWalrus Website => Site Discussion => Site Discussion & Bug Reports => Topic started by: Yuki on June 27, 2015, 09:25:42 PM

Title: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Yuki on June 27, 2015, 09:25:42 PM
I was reading about it, and I think that impacts CodeWalrus in the future, so figured I should discuss of it in this thread.

PHP 7

PHP 7.0.0 alpha 2 recently came out, so this means PHP 7 will come out real soon (more specifically on November 12, 2015, coincidentally on the first anniversary of the CW forum). It brings quite a few new features, such as being twice as fast as PHP 5.6, full 64-bit support and a few new OOP features. So of course it will be worth a try once it will come out in the Debian repos. The change should be pretty seamless and I'm sure SMF will like it, unlike HHVM.

HTTP/2

HTTP/2 has recently been ratified as a web standard and will be published as a RFC. Nginx, the server software we use, plans to support it by the end of 2015. Again, the change would be pretty seamless once we get the version with support of HTTP/2 in Debian. Meanwhile, SPDY, which was the basis to HTTP/2, is available if you switch to https (https://codewalr.us/). We don't plan yet to make it default but we could if we want. It should be a huge improvement over regular HTTP/1.1.

SMF 2.1

Many new features are planned for SMF 2.1, currently in beta, such as full IPv6 support and a nice responsive theme. Of course, unlike the rest of what I stated in this thread, the upgrade won't be easy, we will definitely test it out before pushing it in production like how Omnimaga did it for the 2.0 upgrade and modify the new default theme with our colors. Of course, as you know, we got pressured by Google to do the responsive update earlier than planned and I think @Streetwalrus did a good job at it. But the SMF 2.1 update will definitely be nicer. And I bet they will test it against the new PHP 7.0 once it comes out.

So this is an overview of what came out in 2015 in performance improvement we plan to implement by 2016, it's gonna be pretty interesting.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: CKH4 on June 27, 2015, 10:23:30 PM
Cool, how do you think the plugin transfer will work for smf 2.1
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: novenary on June 27, 2015, 11:16:31 PM
All of this sounds like fun. Speaking of https, we should probably fix a few bugs such as youtube embedding not working.

Quote from: CKH4 on June 27, 2015, 10:23:30 PM
Cool, how do you think the plugin transfer will work for smf 2.1
Four words : pain in the ass. SMF doesn't have a proper plugin API, instead it has mods which are basically direct patches to the code, and according to DJ they're a nightmare to manage (I can understand why).
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: CKH4 on June 27, 2015, 11:29:17 PM
Oh, sounds awful. Good luck to whoever has to figure out which ones are broken.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on June 27, 2015, 11:58:13 PM
I certainly hope this doesn't cause us more problems and work than benefits. >.<
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: CKH4 on June 28, 2015, 12:28:59 AM
I hope so too. At least you will get to try out new plugins.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on June 28, 2015, 01:25:19 AM
Indeed. What sucks with SMF 2.1 tho is that like with 1.1 to 2.0 switch, we will lose functionalities from plugins that were abandoned by their respective authors before SMF 2.1 came out. For example, we can't use the individual member monthly post stats plugin like Omni had until 2013 because it's only for SMF 1.1.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Legimet on June 28, 2015, 02:30:49 AM
I should make an HTTPS Everywhere rule for CodeWalrus.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on June 28, 2015, 02:39:39 AM
Actually I think CW can be used in HTTPS mode too right now, but I don't know if there are still errors.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Legimet on June 28, 2015, 02:44:31 AM
HTTPS Everywhere is an addon that rewrites requests to HTTPS: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If you use it, you stay on HTTPS even if you click on an unencrypted HTTP link.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Yuki on June 28, 2015, 02:57:22 AM
CodeWalrus will definitely work with HTTPS Everywhere, and will go faster this way, but there's still a few minor issues with HTTPS.

And the major problem with SMF (and also phpBB) is that they're not modular at all. The mod system is just a fancy system to easily patch the forum itself, and, you know, when you have too much of them it starts to be a PITA. SMF 3.0 aims to solve the problem by being modular.
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: Snektron on June 28, 2015, 09:26:22 AM
Yeah i can't remember what, but i had a few problems with CW on https some time ago. I'll try it now and see if i find anything :P
Title: Re: PHP 7, other new technologies of 2015 and CodeWalrus
Post by: novenary on June 28, 2015, 01:02:04 PM
Yeah Juju that's what I said about the modding system.

As far as https issues go, Firefox still says the certificate isn't perfect and the YouTube bbcode tag is broken. That's all I remember.