SilverStripe, A CMS To Keep Your Client’s Site Working As It Should

There are many awesome CMS out there that might be the right tool for you and your next website. One of them is SilverStripe. SilverStripe is a great Open Source CMS that is mainly focused on people who already have used a content management system but are not satisfied with it.

SilverStripe uses the Saphire framework and it follows a philosophy of separation between people who make websites and people who use the website. To make this even easier to understand, a developer / designer is easier to add a module to the CMS than an amateur user but managing content features are built with the amateur user in mind.

I got the latest version of the CMS and i must confess that it surprised me with it’s simplicity and power. The system is clever enough to guide you through a lot of confusing situations you would find in other CMS but it might seem a little hard to follow for amateur users.

Installation

Installing the CMS is as easy as 1-2-3, well actually as 1-2 since it only needs a database and some information before you click the install button. Download the CMS, extract and upload the files to your host. The system allows you to specify development servers and other CMS options before installing it and after that you can edit the mysite/_config.php file which is the one that holds this info.

Immediately after the installation SilverStripe will get you to a simple, friendly page with information on what to do next and how:

Creating Pages

The admin panel of SilverStripe is something you will love. All available options and actions are presented in a simple and friendly way most of us are familiar with:

Creating pages and managing content is so easy with SilverStripe that a lot other CMS will seem very confusing after your interaction with it. This is how you can create pages with the system:

Click the “Create” button on the top left of the “Site Content and Structure” tab:

and on the next dialog choose the type of page you want to create and click on the “Go” button. In our case we will choose “page”:

Now a new page has been created for us and is waiting to be edited:

You can now :

• Change the title of the page
• Set the navigation label (Text used in a menu)
• Edit the contents of the page
• Set the page metadata like the URL and description, from the “Metadata” tab
• Change the type of the page and other page behavior from the “Behavior” tab. Available options are:
  • Set as Page
  • Set as Error Page
  • Set as Redirector Page
  • Set as Virtual Page
  • Set the parent page of the page
  • Choose if the page is indexable for search
  • Set the comments setting for this page
• Add Todo info from the “Todo” tab
• Get reports for this page
• Set the access level for this page

SilverStripe uses a customized version of the TinyMCE editor that fits great into the admin panel’s layout. For example the insert image dialog will open a sidebar on the right of the screen with an easy to use layout :

When you are done creating the page you can save it for later use or publish the page (In our case we will publish the page):

The next step is to preview the page in your live site. Just click on the appropriate link on the left of the bottom toolbar:

Modules (Extensions)

Adding modules to SilverStripe requires some steps not obvious to amateur users. For example in order to install the blog module you have to download the package, extract the archive’s files in a directory that you create in the root directory of the CMS and have named as “blog” and then you have to go to:
http://www.example.com/db/build?flush=1
which will flush the database and add the module. This is how the blog module looks like:

Themes

Themes also need to be loaded with a rather user unfriendly procedure. You have to download the theme, put the theme folder in the /themes directory, edit the /mysite/_config.php file and change the :

SSViewer::set_theme('OLD_THEME_NAME');

to:

SSViewer::set_theme('NEW_THEME_NAME');

Then you also need to flush the cache of the CMS by appending : ?flush=1 to the URL. We used the desinis theme and this is how it looks after the installation:

Widgets

Widgets are small pieces of functionality such as Showing the latest Comments or Flickr Photos. They normally display on the sidebar of your website. They are easier to implement than themes and extensions since it only needs to download them and put them in your site’s root folder. After you do this, you can go to a widgets aware module and click on the Widgets tab. This will allow you to position the widgets in a drag n drop fashion like Wordpress:

Personal Opinion

Although SilverStripe is a very easy to use and a powerful CMS, it lucks some ready to use functionality that will help it’s users (from the amateur user view) to further adopt the CMS. For example you need to read the online user guide to find out how to add a module or how to change the theme and, when finally there, the user gets a little confused having to add, edit files and write code, which, in many cases will lead the user to abandon it.

On the other hand, SilverStripe is aimed at people who have some basic knowledge of sites creation and the philosophy of separation between web developers and users is what makes sure your clients will not mess up with their sites. I am definitely going to use this CMS for some of my clients!!

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