This section holds questions about how to get in touch
with the PHP community. The best way is the mailing
lists.
Of course! There are many mailing lists for several
subjects. A whole list of mailing lists can be found on
our Support page.
The most general mailing list is php-general. To subscribe, send mail to
php-general-subscribe@lists.php.net.
You don't need to include anything special in the
subject or body of the message. To unsubscribe, send
mail to php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net.
You can also subscribe and unsubscribe using the
web interface on our
Support page.
There are countless of them around the world. We
have links for example to some IRC servers and foreign
language mailing lists on our
Support page.
If you have problems subscribing to or
unsubscribing from the php-general mailing list, it may
be because the mailing list software can't figure out
the correct mailing address to use. If your email
address was
joeblow@example.com, you can send your
subscription request to
php-general-subscribe-joeblow=example.com@lists.php.net,
or your unsubscription request to
php-general-unsubscribe-joeblow=example.com@lists.php.net.
Use similar addresses for the other mailing lists.
Yes, you will find a list of archive sites on the
Support page. The mailing list articles are also
archived as news messages. You can access the news
server at
news://news.php.net/ with a news client. There is
also an experimental web interface for the news server
at
http://news.php.net/
Since PHP is growing more and more popular by the
day the traffic has increased on the php-general
mailing list and as of now the list gets about 150 to
200 posts a day. Because of this it is in everyones
interest that you use the list as a last resort when
you have looked everywhere else.
Before you post to the list please have a look in
this FAQ and the manual to see if you can find the help
there. If there is nothing to be found there try out
the mailing list archives (see above). If you're having
problem with installing or configuring PHP please read
through all included documentation and README's. If you
still can't find any information that helps you out
you're more than welcome to use the mailing list.
Before asking questions, you may want to read the
paper on How To Ask Questions The Smart Way as
this is a good idea for everyone.
Posts like "I can't get PHP up and running! Help
me! What is wrong?" are of absolutely no use to anyone.
If you're having problems getting PHP up and running
you must include what operating system you are running
on, what version of PHP you're trying to set up, how
you got it (pre-compiled, CVS, RPMs and so on), what
you have done so far, where you got stuck and the exact
error message.
This goes for any other problem as well. You have
to include information on what you have done, where you
got stuck, what you're trying to do and, if applicable,
exact error messages. If you're having problems with
your source code you need to include the part of the
code that isn't working. Do not include more code than
necessary though! It makes the post hard to read and a
lot of people might just skip it all together because
of this. If you're unsure about how much information to
include in the mail it's better that you include to
much than to little.
Another important thing to remember is to
summarize your problem on the subject line. A subject
like "HELP MEEEE!!!" or "What is the problem here?"
will be ignored by the majority of the readers.
And lastly, you're encouraged to read the paper on
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way as
this will be a great help for everyone, especially
yourself.