The phpList community consists of a large number of users and contributors who provide information and develop the future of the project. Last week we had an online meeting of leading community members which took place to discuss recent phpList changes and plans. Four contributors and three phpList Ltd staff participated.

After catching up on what everyone had been working on lately, the main topic under discussion became the Automatic Updater, introduced in December in phpList 3.3.7. This feature had been regularly requested in the Forum, Issue tracker, and at meetups by phpList users, and feedback during the call was quite positive.

The “Outdated version” error message was another topic that has stimulated much forum discussion, as it disables versions of phpList which are older than 2 years. Only phpList 3.3.1 was affected. Running outdated copies of phpList is inadvisable for multiple reasons, but the way this error was manifested, without warning, caused disruption. While the date check remains in phpList, it will be executed more gracefully in future releases.

Competing themes for phpList’s admin web interface was another hot topic during the call: specifically the future of the older Dressprow theme, now that Trevelin has been default for some time. Suggestions were made to improve Trevelin in order to encourage the remaining users of its predecessor to adopt it. These included reducing the number of clicks required for navigation, and fixing a long-standing issue with blurred text in tables.

With phpList’s one-month release cycle, adopted last year, code contributions and feedback take a shorter time to make it into a release. The Community Developer calls will continue for those who wish to help shape the future of the project.