Silverstripe is an open-source web content management system (CMS) used by businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations around the world. It is an effective tool for proficient web development teams and web content creators. Above every other aspect is that it is one of the most effortless CMS experiences accessible.
Silverstripe is likely not the first open-source CMS you’ve heard about. You can be utilizing another open-source CMS based on something like WordPress or Drupal, and be curious about finding out how Silverstripe is more versatile. In our opinion, Silverstripe gives the ‘best of both worlds’ approach.
What is Silverstripe CMS
SilverStripe is a truly object-oriented CMS. It allows you to portray a rich data model for your content and the connections between them, utilizing phrasing that makes sense to your code editors. So, your marketing group will utilize concepts and terminology directly aligned with your institution’s lingua franca.
A key aspect of object orientation is building connections between your information and tackling the interconnected nature of the net. Over the years, we’ve created a collection of pre-built modules that permit us to construct dynamic websites including interconnected substances specifically for social institutions.
Having a well-defined information structure is fundamental for any great computer code. Or user have to be compelled to depend on third-party plugins to characterize a data model that separates from the basic plan of your chosen CMS. Relying intensely on customized plugins to supply fundamental functionality for your site causes compatibility issues with major updates, as well as constant security fixing as vulnerabilities develop in the wild.
How does Silverstripe work?
Silverstripe is a free and open-source Content Management System (CMS) and Framework for creating and maintaining web applications and websites. It gives an out-of-the-box web-based organization board that empowers clients to modify parts of the website, including a WYSIWYG website editor. It works best as a CMS, intuitive, and a great framework with powerful MVC design. Custom extensions can easily extend the core.
This Framework saves you time and cash spent making essential site-building pieces or including highlights to existing code at a high level.
Instead, you’ll utilize the time to construct the functionality you need and easily add new areas or components within the CMS.
It’s also simpler to switch developers, as the system code is simple to get. Its documentation makes it simpler for modern engineers to require and continue with the site.
The Framework permits web groups, governments, and organizations to convey one-of-a-kind and complex computerized techniques on any sort of web experience. These incorporate lightweight informational sites to ecommerce sites with complex exchanges.
Silverstripe’s in-house template language is simple to maintain, clean, and lets you rapidly create your site’s front-conclusion. This translates to less time and cash going through creating the site, plus it’s less demanding to form future updates.
Silverstripe’s CMS is intuitive and easy to navigate. Moreover, it is easy to install by essentially clicking the “Install Silverstripe” button and the installation is done.
The admin engine is also easy to use and very distinctive from other CMS platforms, because it isolates widgets and subjects from the CMS.
Silverstripe offers three distinctive view modes when editing a page within the CMS. From the content editor, you’ll be able to select between the edit, split, or preview mode to streamline the editorial preparation.
In edit mode, which is perfect for lower resolution screens, you’ll be able to see the total CMS view.
Split mode, perfect for high-resolution screens, gives a preview of the current page under editing and the edit screen. Preview mode appears as a preview of the page you’re editing.
With these three modes, you can switch to the one you favor rather than utilizing tabs or windows to see what the real page would look like when live.
The code provided is a reusable code that helps oversee information on your site. It’s one of Silverstripe’s points of interest because it saves you time and money going through the improvement of controls and interfacing. Additionally, you’ll oversee information from a reliable interface.
Silverstripe is exceedingly extensible since you’ll be able to amplify its core features to suit what you would like for your site. Moreover, it implies you’ll oversee the code superior, especially since your site’s needs are growing and changing.
Silverstripe features a colossal security advantage over WordPress fair sense of the latter’s popularity. It may not be 100% secure from malicious threats, but it’s less of a target for programmers compared to WordPress. It moreover has built-in security authorizations or parts to oversee user/group consents.
With Silverstripe, moving from one location to another, in case you are migrating from Joomla to WordPress, is a matter of clicks. You don’t need to upgrade manually; utilize third-party tools to upgrade your database tables, or run, search, and replace.
Silverstripe incorporates a wide variety of modules you’ll be able to select from that includes a cluster of effective functionality to your site. Its Framework makes it less demanding to expand the modules to incorporate additional functionality. Its client community is additionally very huge and interactive.
Content features
Silverstripe offers the following features for your content teams and marketers:
- Content creation for publishing and drafting content in a non-technical and instinctive style.
- A rich content editor that groups content in an easy and clear way.
- Versioning to keep track of changing forms of the content
- The content line to plan content for publishing at an afterward time and order.
- The approval process helps organize approval routing between editors and authors.
- Asset administration to store and oversee rich media files.
- Internal search helps you seek content based on labels, watchwords, metadata, and other variables.
- Content repository manages distributed and pending/draft content instinctively, other than editing, tagging, approving, and publishing the substance.
Silverstripe contains a breadth of appealing pre-built layouts that are free or available to suit your website’s needs. The formats are versatile, responsive, accessible, and simple to customize.
Nothing as Easy as Deploying PHP Apps on Cloud
With Cloudways, you can have your PHP apps up and running on managed cloud servers in just a few minutes.
In case you need a standard design over your websites, Silverstripe offers branding for themes and other plan components that unite your site’s pages into a coherent web presence. That allows you to effortlessly customize your site or Platform’s visual appearance based on your needs.
On Silverstripe Cloud, you’ll find several tools that contribute to your website’s development and growth:
- SEO tools such as pagination, meta tags, page headers, titles, and URL structure.
- Site SEO components like pagination, meta labels, page headers, titles, and URL structure.
- Flexible route to construct distinctive or numerous scientific classifications that record and store your content.
- User part and get to administration so you’ll be able to give get to particular information, highlights, and more based on users/user part or groups.
- Scalability highlights permit you to scale your location so you’ll have a broad web presence.
- Internationalization lets your clients see and connect with your substance in different languages.
- Pre-built custom reports and dashboards offer analytics for your site.
- APIs/Integrations are also accessible, so you can specify how apps communicate with other programs and empower information, rationale, and question integration with other apps or software.
Silverstripe Content Management System Features
Developer Friendly
As Silverstripe uses best practices and software building plan standards, it’s simple for web designers to memorize and work with. It doesn’t require a long time of practice to obtain the ability to construct Silverstripe features. It’s simple to learn as compared to the steep learning curve of Drupal, and its usage is more associated with a standard web application instead of an extraordinary body of information or school of thought.
Easy to Update
Silverstripe CMS gives the capacity to explore and control information as objects without being tied down by ‘hard’ plan choices and specialized obligations. With the release of Silverstripe 4, the user interface was updated and modified with React and other cutting-edge front-end engineering methods. To take advantage of this, the updates are relatively effortless as the basic application framework and information structure is held; you don’t have to make extreme changes to keep your CMS up-to-date.
Easy to use
Silverstripe is instinctive. Your team won’t need to study and understand a 456-page book to figure out how to upgrade your homepage. And no need to go to expensive training courses to ace Silverstripe either. You’ll invest in learning more transferable abilities at a ticketing or arts marketing conference instead! While there’s comprehensive documentation online, we discover a single preparing session for each unused extension we convey is all that’s required. More often than not, this information remains inside the association and is passed down to future editors as staff turnover.
Content Management
Silverstripe exceeds expectations at managing and publishing content, especially within the world of cutting-edge responsive web design, where content must adapt to gadgets with diverse capabilities and viewports. It gives the capacity for web editors to see content in situ, in different measurements, to guarantee your generation pages look great on versatile and desktop when building out your occasions. Highlights like this make it simple to urge the work drained the CMS.
Open source in terms of the open-source innovation it’s built upon, Silverstripe is composed in PHP and runs on Apache HTTP Server / Nginx and Linux-based web servers. This makes it cost-effective to convey, and it’s simple to discover engineers who can and need to work with websites built utilizing these stacks. It works brilliantly with Amazon Web Services (AWS), permitting us to create websites that scale upwards and outwards to handle gigantic activity spikes in activity and utilize numerous items within the AWS biological system.
The use of open source technology comes about in way better programs. As well as decreasing development costs, empowering reliability, and principled security through peer view, your organization isn’t held to deliver by a proprietary merchant. You wish a degree of transparency and collaboration that utilizing open-source programs permits without the limitations of prohibitive program licenses. It empowers individuals to center on building arrangements that fathom honest to goodness issues and advance your organization’s reason without a costly glass ceiling.
How to Integrate Silverstripe on Cloudways
Launch a New Server
Once you have signed up, launch a new server with PHP Stack application where we will install Silverstripe CMS hosting.
Wait for a few minutes to complete the server launch process. Next, select the Application and go to the Application Settings.
Edit application folder name to Silverstripe CMS and click on Save.
Download Silverstripe CMS
Now go to your server and launch SSH Terminal. Log in with your credentials.
Once you are logged in, head to the public_html folder and simply run the download command to download the Silverstripe CMS project.
composer create-project silverstripe/installer my-project
Navigate to Application Settings on the platform and reset the permission.
In the following screenshot you can see that i’ve edited file named “.env.example”
The file’s name in production should be just “.env”, so just copy paste the code from “.env.example” and create a new file name “.env” and paste the same code.
Now, get the database access details from the Application Management & Access Details.
You can access the.env file through FTP or Cloudways Built in SSH terminal.
I’ve changed database name and username to correct (removed “<” and “> symbols) using Filezilla FTP account.
You can access the webpage by adding /my-project/public/ at the end of the URL to open the Silverstripe CMS. If you see the below page, everything has been configured successfully.
Silverstripe vs WordPress
Silverstripe CMS and WordPress are both exceptionally able and flexible pieces of software permitting the creation of interactive and top-ranked websites inside a brief period of time. In spite of the fact that Silverstripe CMS includes a much smaller community and is less-well-known than WordPress – it doesn’t mean it can’t take on the CMS giant. They both have their qualities and shortcomings and are best suited for diverse jobs.
Conclusion
As a platform, Silverstripe is utilized by developers to construct websites and web applications. Silverstripe CMS empowers websites and applications to contain staggering design, great content, and compelling interactive and social capacities. The engineering of Silverstripe CMS hosting permits associations to remain at the cutting edge of web technologies.
Inshal Ali
Inshal is a Content Marketer at Cloudways. With background in computer science, skill of content and a whole lot of creativity, he helps business reach the sky and go beyond through content that speaks the language of their customers. Apart from work, you will see him mostly in some online games or on a football field.
