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.