It's a sad day in the world when I Google something and it returns nothing. … well, a spell checker might help. :D

anyone looking for freelancing work easy 30 minutes work needed

@wordpress_designer What's on your plate? I've taken a week off so might be able to help you, otherwise I recommend checking out wpquestions.com - you can post questions for a money fee but they can also be freelanced, having the contractor do it for you. I've used them a number of times when I have too much work to handle. Otherwise farm it out quickly on Elance which usually has better quality contractors for a reasonable price.

@TomJNowell Couldn't agree more mate, considering the dominance of WP spread through the world, they could seriously influence hosts to shift with the times. I find it odd that they are not trying to push the issue even if in subtle way. Also, I wonder has anyone raised this point with the core team of WP to get some official stance on this? If not, shouldn't we?

@userabuser Matt have been poking hosts some, thus small wave of them hiring WP folks, but I hadn't seen him talk/care much about PHP version

oh

You'd think being somewhat the defacto standard/goto CMS platform that there would be more forward progress... Just goes to show that despite its reach there is still a lot left to be desired, err like refactoring the entire core for starters :D

WP doesn't care about PHP. actually it's almost at war with PHP by killing its functionality in favor of its own for some things (date/time glaring example).

some folks try to turn this into "we don't need to OOP all the things" but really it's "we don't want to help shape language progress and keep up with that progress, it should just shut up, do basic stuff and fuel our world domination"

that is probably appeal of JS shift for Matt - no need to be involved and if user has old browser dashboard will just shout at him to stop being lame and update

@Rarst well said...

@Rarst Seems like the PHPStorm Updates current focus isn't hard to guess :)

@kaiser what did you expect, WP features? :)

There's one thing I notice at every Symfony2 talk or presentation: People show first what should be used, then what should not be used. Then bring an example. This way the slides are hard to scan manually (two steps between concept and example) and the thing you remember (because you saw it most often) is how you shouldn't do it. This is so stupid.

@Rarst I am close to upgrading server and found myself in a sceptical situation because of a controversial statement made by my host regarding installing APC for performance. I summarised it in my question over at serverfault:

What is your opinion about this, are they just "bullshitting" me?

@ChristineCooper yes, whoever said that is incompetent. PHP 5.3 does not have native opcode cache or object cache either (both of which APC provides). PHP 5.5 will get Zend opcode cache.

The problem is that several of the admins are stating this. I am very confused as to why they would state it. So once PHP 5.5 gets released, there won't be a reason to install APC?

Btw I just updated the support ticket and directed them to this question. I will not be surprised if it receives a lot of downvotes and bogus answers... it isn't good press for them.

as above - they are either incompetent or don't want to do that (because they are lazy, because server can't handle it or whatever)

yep, in 5.5 (which is not stable yet) there will be bundled opcode cache available (but not object caching)

They are however advising me to install memcached for performance.

according to PHP creators running PHP without opcode is nuts :)

memcached is object cache (as alternative to using APC for object cache), but it doesn't provide PHP opcode cache

Interesting. I heard that you can have both of them running.

yep, of course - memcached is just completely separate software, it has nothing to do with PHP

So in this case, you would advice me to go with APC considering that it has both object and opcode caching?

btw see support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-questions/… APC listed as dedicated only with "php APC (might be possible on a VPS 5+)" note. likely they just don't want to bother with is on VPS.

Yes I have read that. I will be upgrading to a dedicated server as the price differences are the same as their best VPS ones.

you absolutely need some form of opcode - APC is typical option (there are alternatives like xcache). object cache is also good thing to have but there are more options there (like memcached) and WP doesn't benefit automagically from it - you need to use object cache drop-in

Help me understand, what is the difference between W3 Total Cache's object caching feature and the object caching in memcached?

it's the same thing. basically when you have (1) object cache plugin/dropin and (2) appropriate software installed (APC / memcached, etc) then WP uses it to cache some data for faster access

I tried the W3 object caching for a while and it was eating my memory like crazy.

using what for storage? well, that's the point of object caching - memory is faster :)

Sorry the object caching was set to Disk. Once I disabled it, everything was running twice as fast :D

yeah, disk is "questionable" choice. it tends to make things worse because typically disk is slow comparing to anything else

I will test to enable it with memcached and see what performance it will give. One question, should I be expecting a lot of configuration issues when installing and setting up APC? Basically, is there a lot to fiddle with (for the inexperienced user)?

yep :) you are probably using suphp and will need to recompile apache to use DSO

No I am on fcgi

not sure then, look up how it works with APC

That I will. The fun-fun stuff ;)

wait until you get the itch to switch to nginx and/or add varnish

A developer friend told me to switch to xginx if I really wanted performance improvements and I told him that I will do that in the future, and pay an admin to do it :D

@ChristineCooper I wrote up answer since I spent time explaining it anyway :)

Wow thanks Rarst, that sums up this chat session nicely for the Hostgator admins to see ;) I will leave the answer open for today (for exposure) and accept your answer as correct tomorrow. I will let you know what the HG admins reply :D

I am never leaving LiquidWeb, hosts are scary incompetent out there :)

I liked ceejayoz's comment that Hostgator lied about this because: serverfault.com/a/288535/171482 (although that applies to shared hosting, not VPS, but I am sharing memory though so...)

Hostgator have reliable support as in "always available" but the degree of which they speak truth varies, a lot, as I've experienced in the last two years...

mosts hosting support are like that joke " - I can type 500 words per minute. - Seriously? - Yeah, but turns out total nonsense."

it doesn't help anyone that reply is fast if reply is bullshit

So long as Hostgator support greet you with a friendly hello and bid you a heartfelt goodbye, that's all that matters to their top brass :)

do they have support in-house or somewhere in cheap corner of the world?

@Rarst one time, I ended up giving support to their support while seeking support, no bull.. Gp

guadeloupe?..

...Gp <- doesn't mean anything, typing on

ok :)

On phone grrr

I had once been asking support for Apache configuration details and they were helpless... I ended up accessing full Apache configuration for all accounts on server. which in hindsight was something I should have been probably unable to do... :)

Haha yeah that's like not supposed to happen lol

The textarea input for this chat room is three quarters up the page on this iPhone... Sucks. Useless thing.

Time to call it a day I think, goodnight all...

If I would give access to the current support ticket, you all will laugh so much. It starts of with one admin saying that I must install APC immediately, then another that says I should skip it and go with memcached, then a third saying that its pointless to install APC...

Excerpt:

Our mod tools are really nice.

couldn't find replacement tea pot... baaaaaaaaad

@Rarst special important everyday stuff like this needs to be carefully considered before bought.

@toscho looks like a broken tea pot :)

I just wanted to by same, but they don't have it anymore :(

now: evolve

evolve to what?

evolve tea pot. not you :P

I can't even match what I had...

btw: this stickers are normally applied to large windows so birds don't collide with transparent materials. thought you may have access to wall that's not too far away from the exhaust pipe

> A bundle is kind of like a plugin in other software. So why is it called a bundle and not a plugin? This is because everything is a bundle in Symfony2, from the core framework features to the code you write for your application.

- Symfony2

> If you follow these conventions, then you can use bundle inheritance to "override" files, controllers or templates. For example, you can create a bundle - AcmeNewBundle - and specify that it overrides AcmeDemoBundle. When Symfony loads the AcmeDemoBundle:Welcome:index controller, it will first look for the WelcomeController class in AcmeNewBundle and, if it doesn't exist, then look inside AcmeDemoBundle. This means that one bundle can override almost any part of another bundle!

- Symfony2 / Extending Bundles

@toscho what is that showing?

@TomJNowell voting patterns

@TomJNowell The broken tea pot from @Rarst

@kaiser you mean @Rarst broke a teapot?!!

jes

HOW?!

gravity?

@Rarst I thought you handled things with the utmost precision, derived from the utmost contempt for all things

I am clumsy. I dropped it and then applied too much force when catching it :( at least I crushed it directly above trash bin and didn't cut myself to death... better than usual

wait … usually you cut yourself to death?

well not to death... few times came close... most of the time it just hurts :)

Folks, would you point me to some proven tutorials and manuals for WordPress (printed or web-based). I'm not new to programming (wrote a lot of C code for microcontrollers). Recently I've decided to add a blog to my site and move to WordPress-as-CMS altogether (while I'm at it). Before that, my site was just static HTML.

@NickAlexeev split it into specific tasks, look up tutorials for specific tasks... too much stuff going on in it for there to be any kind of good generic guides. the official documentation cleanup is work in progress

the handbooks are work in progress see make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual for user one (hadn't looked at it in a while, not sure about state)

directory structure is flexible, but usually left alone. basically user-generated and user-installed things go into wp-contentand rest is WP itself

database schema here codex.wordpress.org/Database_Description but it will likely be a while before you need direct database access, most things go through API functions

core load and main file responsibilities look like this rarst.net/images/wordpress_core_load.png but there is muuuuuch more going on :)