Welcome to Apply Filters, Episode 50.  Today we’re talking about the upcoming launch of PHP7 and what it could mean to you as a WordPress theme and plugin developer.  This update to the framework will bring massive performance improvements, but along with that will come several adjustments to how we handle code, compatibility, and interaction with other plugins.

This show is sponsored by WP Ninjas, makers of Ninja Forms and Ninja Demo.

Updates:

Pippin

New site for Restrict Content Pro with a lot of help from Andrew Munro

Rolling out Mailchimp automation, especially with EDD to get people into a drip campaign

Initiative to increase happiness scores in HelpScout and overall customer service performance

Team Retreat around Pressnomics in March in Phoenix.

Brad

Been troubleshooting ads in Adroll

OffloadS3 – managing compatibility with popular other plugins via add-on licenses to base plugin

MigrateDBPro

New UI based on Backbone.js

Multisite integration

Company retreat – around WordCamp Europe in Vienna, Austria next year.

PHP7:

Release date expected to be November 12

Performance improvements with PHP7 will be significant (2-3x improvement over PHP5)

Exception handling – errors will be caught as exceptions

Testing tools are available to forward test your code against the new framework.

To take a look at the documentation around PHP7 check out the Zend blog at www.zend.com/en/resources/php-7.

The Make blog in WordPress has been chronicling the upcoming changes to PHP7 and what it may mean to WordPress theme and plugin developers.  The most recent article from them is at

If you’re enjoying the show we sure would appreciate a Review in iTunes.  Thanks!

Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Apply Filters, the podcast all about WordPress development. Now here’s your hosts, Pippin Williamson and Brad Touesnard.

PIPPIN: Welcome back to Episode 50 of Apply Filters. This episode, as usual, is sponsored by the WP Ninjas, the creators of Ninja Forms, Ninja Demos, and a few other great WordPress plugins. You should go check them out at WPNinjas.com.

They’re doing some really cool stuff with their new Ninja Forms 3.0 that they’ve been previewing, so go check it out. Their YouTube channel has some previews of it, if that’s something that you’re interested in. We definitely appreciate all their support. It helps us to put this show together for you guys.

BRAD: For sure. If you are running a little WordCamp and having trouble getting sponsorship, you should reach out to us because we’re looking to help out kind of the smaller WordCamps that are having trouble. If you’re a small WordCamp, yeah, let us know. We can try to help you out.

PIPPIN: Yeah, it’s going to be really fun to try and help some of the smaller ones. In the last few years, I’ve gone to a lot of different WordCamps, and some of the small ones have been some of my favorites. They’re a little more intimate. I like to see people that are just getting a WordCamp started and, yeah, so we’d love to help out in any way that we can.

BRAD: Awesome. What have you been up to, Pippin?

PIPPIN: I’ve been doing a few things. It’s been two and a half, three weeks since our last episode. I know we’re a couple days behind. I was traveling over the weekend and had some things come up during the week last week, so we’re a few days behind.

During that time, we just launched a new website for my Restrict Content Pro plugin. This is my membership plugin that I’ve worked on for the last four and a half to five years.

BRAD: Oh, yeah. I saw that last week. This site looks great.

PIPPIN: Fantastic. I’m glad you like it.

BRAD: Yeah. There’s like little animations here and there that are–

PIPPIN: There are. Yeah. That’s all Andrew Monroe’s work. He’s my partner on Affiliate WP. He’s been working on EDD for the last three years or so. He did the Aff