Girish Mahajan (Editor)

SilverStripe

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Developer(s)
  
SilverStripe

License
  
BSD License

Operating system
  
Cross-platform

SilverStripe

Stable release
  
3.5.0 / November 29, 2016 (2016-11-29)

Type
  
Content management system

SilverStripe is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) and Framework for creating and maintaining websites and web applications. It provides an out of the box web-based administration panel that enables users to make modifications to parts of the website, which includes a WYSIWYG website editor. The core of the software is SilverStripe Framework, a PHP Web application framework.

Contents

SilverStripe is released under the terms of the BSD License.

Software design

SilverStripe separates the roles of content authors (who get a rich (AJAX) web-based user interface that omits technical jargon) and website designers/developers (who write code: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP). This provides a contrast to CMS products that allow technical website development tasks to be performed within a GUI, and a contrast to programming frameworks that offer no out of the box content authoring application. The SilverStripe approach is stated to remove complexity for content authors, and offer more flexibility to developers.

The core of SilverStripe is named SilverStripe Framework. As with the rest of the platform, it is written in PHP (5.3), and takes advantage of its object-oriented design capabilities such as name-spacing. Sapphire provides website developers a framework to build and extend websites based on modern programming techniques including the model-view-controller (MVC like, the model doesn't include the ability to notify the view of updates) pattern and object-relational mapper.

SilverStripe generates markup using a custom template language based on W3C HTML5 that offers simple placeholders and conditional logic. SilverStripe is extensible through modules, widgets, themes and code customization.

Features

Notable features of the SilverStripe CMS include:

  • Out of the box template, supporting responsive design (works on smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers)
  • An extensible web application interface
  • Rich-text editing based on a modified version of TinyMCE
  • Quick embedding of videos and other resources from websites like YouTube, slideshare, etc. (using oEmbed)
  • Drag-and-drop tree-based navigation structure
  • Custom output markup and table-free default styles (including HTML5 and mobile support)
  • Work-flow management: Draft/Published separation through content staging, document revision control/rollback with 'compare' functionality
  • Configurable security/permissions model (role-based)
  • Data object model, database generation through object-relational mapping, suite of customizable data input controls.
  • asset management, image resizing, drag&drop images from OS desktop to upload.
  • Multiple templates per page
  • Search engine friendly URLs, metadata management, XML site map generation
  • Full text search and RSS feeds
  • Optimizations for heavy loads (full and part-template caching)
  • Internationalization/Languages: SilverStripe supports multiple-language content. UTF-8 and the internationalization of character sets are supported. The CMS is available in many languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, and Chinese.
  • Hierarchical URLs
  • Cross-platform: OS (Linux, Windows, Mac), Web server (Apache, IIS), Database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server fully supported; SQLite and Oracle Database have limited support.)
  • Notable features of upcoming releases of SilverStripe include:

  • Additional administration UI (e.g. web-interface based installation of modules, widgets)
  • Complete transition to jQuery library (currently uses jQuery with a mixture of older JavaScript frameworks.)
  • Site-wide widgets
  • Common CMS features not currently available in SilverStripe include:

  • In-place page editing
  • Web interface based installation of modules, widgets or themes
  • Web interface based customization of themes
  • Automated cache management/ORM refresh
  • Modules, widgets, and themes

    Modules extend the core functionality of SilverStripe. Some existing modules include: Blog, Advanced Workflow Management, eCommerce, Forum, LDAP/OpenID authentication. Modules are available from the SilverStripe modules repository, which as of January 2016, lists over 1400 modules.

    SilverStripe Widgets are small pieces of functionality that can be drag-and-dropped into SilverStripe modules (notably the blog module). Examples of widgets include: tag clouds, Flickr photos, or word of the day, although widgets are a relatively less-used aspect of the platform. As of August 2012, there are 96 widgets.

    The SilverStripe themes directory provides a number of community-contributed, freely available themes (84 as of August 2012).

    Modules, widgets, and themes are all available as free downloads under the BSD license, and the majority of them are community contributed.

    Software requirements

    SilverStripe is a web application, requiring a compatible web server and SQL database. As of version 3.1., the requirements for SilverStripe are as follows:

  • Apache v1.3.19+, Lighttpd, Hiawatha, Cherokee, or Microsoft IIS 7.x+ (A URL Rewriter is required. As of 2.4.0 IIS 7 URL rewriting is supported out of the box)
  • MySQL v5.0.X+, Microsoft SQL Server 2008+, PostgreSQL 8.3+, SQLite3 (community maintained) and Oracle Database (experimental)
  • PHP 5.3.2+ with MySQL, GD Graphics Library and zlib support
  • Documentation

    SilverStripe is released under the terms of the BSD License. Documentation is available for CMS users and website developers. An online demonstration of the CMS is available as a video and as an interactive demo. Two technical reference books on SilverStripe are available in English and one in German.

    History

    The SilverStripe software is developed by SilverStripe Limited, a website development company founded in 2000.

    Prior to SilverStripe 2.x, the CMS was commercially available under a proprietary license. Development of SilverStripe 2.X started in late 2005, as a complete overhaul to take advantage of object orientation and new features in PHP5.

    SilverStripe was one of Creative HQ’s (a business incubator) first residents and graduated in 2006.

    On 3 February 2007, SilverStripe 2.0.0 was released publicly as free and open source software.

    In March 2007, SilverStripe was selected for the Google Summer of Code program. This program resulted in the 2.2 release of SilverStripe.

    On 29 November 2007, SilverStripe announced they would be participating in the Google Highly Open Participation Contest. This led to a proliferation of themes, translations and widgets that broadened the system.

    In late 2008, SilverStripe split its main website into silverstripe.com, to act as the home for the company behind the software, and silverstripe.org, to act as the home for the software and its open source community.

    In May 2009, the SilverStripe company formed partner associations with other website development companies to represent the company in foreign markets.

    In February 2010, SilverStripe claimed the software had been downloaded 250,000 times since first released.

    In November 2010, Microsoft blogged that SilverStripe CMS became the world's first open source web application to attain its 'Certified for Windows' status.

    In June 2012, SilverStripe 3.0 CMS was released, containing significant usability and developer API changes; SilverStripe Framework was released for the first time as a stand-alone framework.

    In October 2013, SilverStripe 3.1 CMS was released, with more visual feedback and easier preview, composer support, YAML configuration and an improved UploadField

    Awards

  • Winner Packtpub Most Promising CMS Award 2008, $2000 prize.
  • Winner in New Zealand Open Source Awards for October 2008 and in 2010.
  • Most promising finalists in the 2007 Open Source CMS Awards
  • Finalists in the New Zealand Open Source Awards for October 2007
  • Version 3.0 (latest as of November 2012)

  • SSBits (10 September 2012) SilverStripe 3 Review
  • Version 2

  • SilverStripe Review (3 April 2009) SilverStripe - 2.3 series Review
  • Microsoft Case Study (17 March 2009) SilverStripe--Windows interoperability creates new markets and fresh opportunities for open source company
  • ReadWriteWeb, 14 September 2007, SilverStripe - Open Source CMS Has Support From Google
  • Interview on New Zealand Television Show, 1 May 2007, (Video) Close Up, Democratic Technology
  • Hiveminds Magazine, 15 March 2007, SilverStripe CMS is proof that open-source works
  • References

    SilverStripe Wikipedia