- Standards The standards Exponential follows and how well it complies (accessibility, security, privacy, web, internationalization, PHP, documentation, APIs, databases, Git, coding and testing), its architectural rules, and a…
- Accessibility standards How Exponential measures up against WCAG 2.2 AA, WAI-ARIA 1.2, EN 301 549 and Section 508, with the templates, stylesheets and tests that prove it and the gaps that remain.
- Security standards Exponential against the OWASP Top 10 (2021), OWASP ASVS 4.0.3, Content Security Policy Level 3 and the OWASP cheat sheets, with the settings, classes and tests behind each mitigation.
- Privacy standards What Exponential provides for the GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive and CAN-SPAM: consent records, one-click unsubscribe, erasure, log minimization and retention, cookies and third-party services, and what stays with the…
- Web platform standards Exponential against the web platform standards it speaks: HTTP semantics, caching and HTTP/2, TLS, HTML, CSS, ECMAScript, URLs, media types, cookies, robots and sitemaps, RSS and Atom feeds, and Open Graph.
- Internationalization standards How Exponential handles Unicode, CLDR locale data, BCP 47 language tags, ISO codes, right-to-left text, time zones and translation catalogues, with evidence and honest gaps.
- PHP, PHP-FIG and Composer standards Which PHP versions Exponential supports, which PHP-FIG recommendations (PSR-1 to PSR-20) it follows or not, how it uses Composer and Packagist, and how its version numbers relate to Semantic Versioning.
- Coding standards The code style of Exponential and how it is checked - the phpcs ruleset, PHPCompatibility for PHP 8.0, PHPStan with a baseline, PHP 8.0 lint, file headers, naming, and the template, CSS and JavaScript rules.
- Naming prefixes - sevenx and exp The canonical rule for the code prefixes of 7x - sevenx is the official public PHP code prefix of 7x because an identifier cannot start with a digit, 7x extensions and classes use sevenx or exp as 7x needs, and exp is…
- Testing and continuous integration How Exponential is tested - PHPUnit suites with and without a database, the test map, the GitHub Actions workflows, the file manifest, git hooks and the gates before a push - with counts and known gaps.
- Planned changes with OpenSpec How a larger change to Exponential is planned before it is built - the OpenSpec directory, the plan-driven schema, the order proposal, specs, design, tasks, plan, apply and verify, and where finished changes and their…
- Source control and releases The Git conventions of Exponential - branches, merges, commit messages and changelogs - and its release policy - permanent tags, how version numbers are chosen, extension metadata and Packagist.
- Documentation and publishing standards Which documentation and document format standards Exponential follows (DITA 1.3, CommonMark and GFM, GNU FDL 1.3, GPL v2, EPUB 3.3, EPUB Accessibility 1.1, PDF, OpenDocument, Doxygen), with evidence and gaps.
- API and protocol standards Which API and network protocol standards Exponential implements (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, REST over HTTP, JSON, WebDAV, SOAP, RSS, Atom, sitemaps, SMTP, LDAP, webhooks), with evidence, status and gaps.
- Database and SQL standards How Exponential relates to the SQL standard (ISO/IEC 9075) and the dialects of SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle and MongoDB: the eZDB abstraction, dialect handling, schemas, character sets and CI coverage.
- Kernel architecture How a request flows through the Exponential kernel and the rules for each building block: modules, policies, datatypes, persistence, settings, designs, templates, caches, events and the servers.
- Layering and naming rules Which layer of Exponential may depend on which, what each layer is for, and how new classes, modules, settings, templates, CSS classes, tables, translation contexts and commands are named.
- Compatibility, releases and deployment The backward compatibility policy of Exponential 6.0.x, how versions and releases are numbered and published, and the standard order of steps for deploying a change or an upgrade.
- Design pattern catalogue Every abstraction and design pattern of the Exponential 6 stack, found in the source code: 6206 instances in 29 categories across kernel, lib and extensions, with file, class, description and extension point.
- Source file header template (inherited, 4.1) The copyright and license header that every PHP file of the inherited 4.x code base started with, kept as the historical template; new files use the docblock header described in the coding standards.
Documentation license
This documentation is free documentation, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later.
Exponential Copyright © 1998-2026 Exponential Foundation and 7x