What changed, and when.

Published

Reference: PHP 8.2 to 8.4, what breaks and how to tell

The PHP project’s migration guides for 8.3 and 8.4 (backward-incompatible changes, deprecations, removed extensions and other changes), read in full for a WordPress plugin or theme and for a custom PHP app. Each change that can touch one is rated likely, possible or rare, our judgement and labelled so, with how to tell you’re affected, what to do (php.net’s advice, or ours where php.net gives none, labelled) and a link to its php.net page, all checked on 26 October 2026. It names the four extensions PHP 8.4 no longer ships, quotes WordPress’s and WooCommerce’s own PHP 8.4 statements, and lists what it leaves out. The PHP 8.2 guide links to it.

ReferencePHP 8.2 guide

Published

Reference: .NET 8 to 10 breaking changes for web apps

Microsoft’s six breaking-change lists between .NET 8 and .NET 10 (.NET 9 and 10, ASP.NET Core 9 and 10, EF Core 9 and 10), read in full for an ASP.NET Core web app, an API or a worker service. Each change that can touch one is rated likely, possible or rare, our judgement and labelled so, with how to tell you’re affected, what Microsoft says to do and a link to its own page, all checked on 25 October 2026. The page lists what it leaves out and why. The .NET 8 guide links to it, and two of its statements now use Microsoft’s more precise wording: the built-in BinaryFormatter always throws, and targeting .NET 10 is officially supported only in Visual Studio 18.0 and later.

Reference.NET 8 guide

Published

Guide: rolling out an AI assistant at a small company

A practical checklist for an owner, operations or IT lead rolling out an AI assistant to a team of 10 to 200: the first jobs to try, a team plan or the API, workspace setup, the data and privacy settings in Anthropic’s own words, a usage policy template, training, the coding tool for developers, connecting other systems, how to measure it and a phased plan. Every product fact was checked on Anthropic’s own pages on 25 October 2026 and is dated on the page; anything those pages didn’t confirm was left out.

Guide

Published

News: PHP2Shell, what to do now

A living page on CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, the two critical PHP vulnerabilities in the PHP project’s advisory of 21 October 2026: the fixed versions, who is affected, how to check your version, what to do by situation and the advisory’s interim mitigations, with third-party reports attributed by name. It adds our own figure from the WordPress PHP tracker’s 21 October snapshot: the share of reporting WordPress sites on PHP 8.1 or older, where the PHP project ships no fixed release. Dated updates are added at the foot as things develop.

PHP2ShellTracker

Published

A Windows Server 2016 guide

Windows Server 2016 now has a deadline guide of its own: what its end of extended support covers, how to find every 2016 server, the supported upgrade paths, what Microsoft says about Extended Security Updates, and a dated plan. Its row in the table links the new guide instead of the .NET Framework 4.6.2 guide, which stays where it was; the two link to each other. The row was checked again at Microsoft’s lifecycle page and cross-checked with endoflife.date. No date moved.

Windows Server 2016Row

Verified

Dates re-checked at their source

Every date in the table was checked again against its vendor’s page (Microsoft’s lifecycle pages, the .NET support policy and php.net) and cross-checked with endoflife.date. No date moved. The Windows Server and SQL Server rows now show this check as their verified date; rows with a guide keep the day the guide’s other facts were last checked.

Deadline table

Published

Teardowns: a reveal-day launch page, measured

The first teardown: Porsche’s Mission S page, measured in the lab on reveal day with Lighthouse, three runs per device. What its design does well, what it costs on a phone, five lessons for a launch page, and the method.

Teardown

Changed

Reuse terms and accuracy notices

The data files are free to download, subscribe to and quote, with credit and a link, under our terms of use; the JSON files now carry those terms, a link to them and an accuracy notice, and the calendar says to confirm each date with its vendor. Every research page and deadline guide now says the dates are the vendors’ own and can change. The method no longer says dates are checked “by hand”, and states the weekly re-check as an aim. The WordPress tracker now says the PHP project no longer patches the versions it counts, notes that some hosts backport fixes, and marks WordPress.org’s shares as WordPress.org’s data.

MethodologyDatasetTracker

Published

WordPress end-of-life PHP tracker

A page that reads the stored daily snapshots on each visit: the share of WordPress sites reporting to WordPress.org on a PHP version with no security support, the share on PHP 8.2, every version’s php.net support status, and the series day by day with its gaps listed. The series is also published as CSV, and the JSON now carries the share on supported versions and php.net’s active-support dates.

TrackerCSVJSON

Published

The research library

A hub for the guides, data and tools; the deadline table with a permanent link for every row; this methodology and changelog; and a page for the lifecycle dataset. Each data row now carries its row’s link, and calendar events without a guide link to their row.

ResearchDeadline tableMethodologyLifecycle dataset

Added

Windows Server and SQL Server rows

Six rows, each checked against its Microsoft Learn lifecycle page and cross-checked with endoflife.date that day: Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 Extended Security Updates, Windows Server 2022 mainstream support, SQL Server 2014 Extended Security Updates, and SQL Server 2016 extended support and Extended Security Updates.

Windows Server 2012Windows Server 2022SQL Server 2014SQL Server 2016

Published

Data files, deadline calendar and feed

Every row as JSON and CSV, one row per version with its primary source and verified date; every date as an all-day event in an iCalendar file to subscribe to; and an RSS feed of the guides and resources.

JSONCSVCalendarRSS

Added

WordPress PHP-version series started

A daily job saves WordPress.org’s published PHP-version shares, one snapshot a day. WordPress.org publishes only the current figures, so the series starts with the first day a snapshot was stored; a missed day is listed as a gap, never filled in.

WordPress PHP data (JSON)

Changed

Guides take every date from the table

The three deadline guides now read their dates and verified date from the same table as the data, and each has its “support has ended” copy written in advance, published by the first deploy after its date.

Verified

Every date checked at its source

Each date in the table was checked against its primary source, Microsoft’s lifecycle pages and php.net, and the support horizon on the modernization page began drawing them on one timeline.

Support horizon

Published

Three deadline guides

Guides to the end of support for .NET Framework 4.6.2, for .NET 8 and .NET 9, and to the end of life of PHP 8.2: what ends, how to check what you run, and the paths forward.

.NET Framework 4.6.2.NET 8 and .NET 9PHP 8.2