Why official question2answer.org is not built by ver 1.7 which has just been released?

Question

Weldone scott and everyone elase who contributed in the delivery of this beautiful! I can at least name over 10 developers who where invovled from design to develope test etc !huge success! good job guys

 

Now that qa1.7 is out why this offical website is not built with this latest version?

Comments

I think Gideon may not be getting time and will soon update this site to latest Q2A update. This is just my perception, maybe somthing else is also on the way.

Answer 1

It turns out there's an issue in PHP 5.1 which the Q2A site is running. I'm working with Gideon to sort it out so it should be updated soon.

Comments

Oh, PHP 5.1? Do you need to change Q2A core? If so, I want to share the problem at anywhere (github issues, etc).

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@sama55 not sure what you mean...
The specific issue was the json_decode function not being available (even though I specifically added a workaround for that).

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I got it. json_decode is function that can be used in PHP5.2 later. That is, PHP compatibility of Q2A will become PHP 5.2 and later. There may be a need to review the installation requirements.

http://www.question2answer.org/install.php
Before(Now):
PHP 4.3 or later, PHP 5.x for all functionality.
After
PHP 5.2 later for all functionality. ???

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I guess 5.1.6 is being used in this server. Facebook plugin is running and working. This means the fallback is being used. That fallback is almost the same as the implemented in the 1.7 core. Only issue I can think of is that the _encode function is available and the _decode one is not and then the fallback IF fails. Ridiculous scenario but that is my only guess.

I could install a VM with an old linux version with PHP < 5.2 and give it a try but I would tack the issue focusing on the facebook plugin first.

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Hmm... Current version of WordPress is V4.1. WordPress raised PHP version from PHP4.3 to PHP5.2.4 after WP-V3.2. Drupal is also same. Therefore, I think Q2A also should be raising the requirements of PHP.

Reference:
https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/
https://www.drupal.org/requirements

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@pupi1985 this site is still running Q2A 1.6.3, so the Facebook plugin is the old one that's compatible with PHP 4.

I'm pretty sure that the issue is the json polyfill is done at the bottom of qa-base.php, but the plugins are loaded before then and the plugin code calls json_decode. Unfortunately I don't have access to PHP 5.1, only 5.2 on a virtual machine.

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It seems you've hit the nail. As long as the json polyfill is executed before the plugin load and after the QA_INCLUDE_DIR constant definition, it will be fine (slightly uncomfortable where it needs to be placed but there is no other way). This keeps 5.1.6 as the minor needed PHP version.

I see the site has been updated. Just don't forget to update the main site (which claims PHP 5.2 is needed), the how to install section (which mentions PHP 4.3) and the demo site :)

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@Scott , Are you going to upgrade the Snow theme of this site to SnowFlat ? I think if it is done so , it might attract more users to use q2a .

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@Ami Default theme of V1.7 is still Snow. It means that SnowFlat is still experimental distribution. SnowFlat have still many issues now. If main purpose is for raising quality of SnowFlat early, your suggestion may be good. However, adopting as default theme will be too early. By the way, Snow was adopted as default theme from Q2A-V1.5.3. Then, many bugs have been fixed. It would be appropriate to think at about V1.7.2.

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Okey . Thanks for the info @sama55

Answer 2

I hope it will be updated soon and will have a great changes .

Also hope this release will make q2a more popular .