Currently there are 3 Global Important threads and 11 other Important threads stuck to the top of the PHP forum. When I have the forum open in Chrome on my secondary monitor (1600 x 900 resolution) I have to scroll down significantly to see the first non-sticky thread! (Heaven only knows what it’s like trying to view the forum on a mobile device!)
Can I suggest the Global Important threads remain as-is, and the other Important threads are all linked from a single Group sticky (Important) thread?
(I appreciate that this isn’t a question about PHP, but it is a question relating to the PHP forum).
Good point - that’s a bit daunting. I’ve gotten rid of one global thread as it was a timeliness thread which was over two months old. As for the rest, I think a better approach would be to cull those other important threads to see:
what’s a duplicate
what’s out of date and needs to be removed/updated (that thread from 2002 is probably in need of some love)
what can be combined (can the gotcha’s be merged into one superthread?)
But this effort’s going to need someone to spearhead it. With the migration coming sooner than later, I’m not sure anyone on the staff is going to have the time while they’re still testing to ensure the new forum works as well as possible out of the box. So this may need to come down to one - or, preferably, more - non-staffers to take this and run. Any volunteers?
I’m happy to coordinate an effort to review and revise the PHP stickies. As has been mentioned, some are getting quite long in the tooth now, and best practices have moved on a lot.
I’d be very interested in getting feedback from the many knowledgeable and experienced members who hang around this forum. Do you find any of the existing information useful and worth preserving? Could it perhaps be condensed into a list of good quality PHP resources from around the web? Is there advice that is now considered bad practice and should be removed, or anything important that is missing?
As I said in my OP - the first quick and easy fix is to unsticky the Important threads, create a new sticky (Important) thread called, say, Important Stuff, then link the previous Important threads therein. Voila - forum tidied very easily. (Then a more systematic approach could be taken to make sure what is linked therefrom actually is important).
To start with, I think this thread should be pinned at least until the cleanup is done.
The two oldest threads (Advanced PHP Resources and MVC Confusion) have been dormant for ten years. I actually remember following them when they were works in progress but they are now completely out of date. I really don’t think they provide much value to our typical visitor and are quite misleading.
I don’t see much point in the Installing PHP on windows thread either. Most users are going to use something like XAMPP or WAMPP. Those that do want to install from scratch will follow the latest guidelines.
I vote we just unpin those three threads as a start. The other old one are probably not of much use either but I have not looked at them yet.