PHP Onboarding Initiative: Fixing the Newcomer Experience

The PHP Foundation just launched the PHP Onboarding Initiative, a Special Interest Group aimed at the experience of people picking up PHP for the first time. Elizabeth Barron, the Foundation's Executive Director, announced it on August 3, 2026, and there's a kickoff meeting on Monday, August 24 at 13:00 UTC.

The reasoning is that a rough start costs the community people it never hears from again. Onboarding is part of the Foundation's 2026 strategy, and this group is where the work gets done.

Where Newcomers Get Stuck#

The announcement lists six problems the group wants to take on:

Where to begin — There's no shortage of tutorials, and that's the problem. A newcomer can't tell which ones are current and accurate, and the volume alone is a lot to sort through.

Minding the gap — The php.net Manual is a reference, not a course. There's a gap between material for someone learning to code and the manual that experienced developers reach for.

Limited presence in formal education — PHP is largely missing from universities and bootcamps. It's taught in some places, but inconsistently, and the post notes there's no one-size-fits-all fix.

Finding your people — Some newcomers arrive already connected to the community. Others are on their own, and their experience looks nothing like the first group's.

Mentorship is hard to find — Earlier mentorship programs proved hard to sustain, even though research from the Linux Foundation points to mentorship as a factor in whether people stick around and become contributors.

Installation process — Getting PHP installed is a new user's first impression, and it's worth keeping that experience in mind.

A couple of these overlap with the PHP Ambassadors SIG, which is already up and running. Anything touching the php.net website in particular lands near that group's marketing subgroup.

Here's Barron on why she thinks it's worth attempting:

These problems are not new and they aren't easy to solve, but one thing about the PHP community that I personally love is its dedication to sharing knowledge with new learners and helping newcomers find their way.

How to Get Involved#

To attend the kickoff, register your interest with this form. If you already submitted it, you don't need to do it again.

Can't make the meeting? The group also runs asynchronously. Join the #the-php-foundation channel on the #phpc Discord server, which is where the SIG chats live, or work through the GitHub repository.

It's been an active week for the Foundation, which also added Anne McCarthy of Automattic to its board.

Read the full announcement on The PHP Foundation blog.