Familiar with SilverStripe? What are your opinions/impressions?

Question

I'm trying to pick a good CMS that isn't a portal. All of my research as lead me to believe SilverStipe is the best option. I'd like some opinions/impressions.

Thanks for any thoughts you have.

edit: I've decided to try it out. I'll post my own answer after I've had some time with it. It seems like based on the lack of a response there isn't a large user base. (At least who intersect with the Stack Overflow community.)

Answer 1

I'm not but maybe will check it out. I'd question about WordPress that might be of interest. As a side effect, I'm also going to look at the suggested python framework django. There are other php cms referenced in SO.

Answer 2

I just stumbled upon Silverstripe / Sapphire a week ago or so (now is the 3rd November 2008) and I was amazed. This seems to be an underestimated piece of software. I'm not such a pro that I could say it for sure but I believe their code is very solid, clean and intelligent. They just got and award for the most promising open source CMS which might be a hint in the same direction.

• The CMS still lacks the vast amount of plugins and modules if you compare it with Joomla or Drupal but their code seems more advanced.
• The whole CMS uses the active record pattern approach and a clean MVC design. If you create a new pagetype you can add new db-fields in the page class, flush the db built via url and the cms inserts the new tables and fields.
• Building templates is easier compared to Joomla for example, thanks to MVC and thanks to a two level approach using templates and subtemplates called layouts. E.g. if you have a page type called "BlogPage" the "BlogPage" Class first looks for a "BlogPage" template and if it doesn't find it it looks for a "BlogPage" layout and inserts it at the given place in the template.

That's just my first impression after a few days of dabbling around with it.

Answer 3

So far I have found it to be very interesting. It does have its share of issues, but overall it is very flexible. The basics are easy to get nailed down in a couple hours, but the more advanced things take a couple days to really get the hang of. However I am new to MVC so that is where most of my learning curve was spent.

It is definitely worth a look. I'd recommend that anyone trying to do advanced things be pretty familiar with PHP and MVC design, or plan on getting familiar.

There are plenty of resources for help at the website: http://silverstripe.com/community-overview/

I've used the tutorials, but the best help on more advanced things are found in the forum.

I'm still interested to hear what others think, keep posting.

Answer 4

There is also a book on Silverstripe out now - at least a German version, English version anounced for release end of August

Answer 5

Our company switched from a custom cms to SilverStripe (SS) last year. Active Record made the migration take much longer than anticipated because of all the building. It also makes data sharing harder. So be wary if you have A LOT of sites like we do that share data.

Other than that...actually developing a site/CMS in SilverStripe is an OO dream come true. No more coding some app feature and then coding some admin and then bug fixing them both and having one work and not the other. I recommend SS heartily for developers looking for a mature active record/php solution that really has some thought behind it. The admin is really cool.

Bonus: Most of the time I am trying to do something and I am like WTF...I just search or browse the code and there's already a function to do exactly what I wanted.

Support: no problems here. There's a forum which is answered when intelligent questions are asked and not already answered. This can only improve in time with more people getting on board and Ingo's SS book getting translated into English.

Answer 6

i have used a couple other frameworks, codeigniter, cake, drupal, joomla, some CMS, others not, and Silverstripe now a bit, it seems a little slower in performance than these other frameworks. But it does have some cool pieces and features that really make implementation fast. So if your site istn't that big and you're not concerned about really high performance, this might be a good choice. But i might look into the others if performance (speed, high volume, etc) is a requirement.

Answer 7

Having checked the online documentation, forum, API reference, etc. I bought the book. Best thing I ever did - I would recommend this course of action to anyone looking to get even slightly serious with SilverStripe.

Having said that, the project is still young, and the online documentation is in the process of being restructured. Given time, I think it can only improve.