Silverstripe CMS is a
free and open source content management system
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...
(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.
Silverstripe CMS is released under the terms of the
BSD License.
Software design
Silverstripe CMS 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 contrasts with CMS products which allow technical website development tasks to be performed within a GUI, and also contrasts with programming frameworks which offer no out-of-the-box content authoring application. The Silverstripe CMS approach allegedly removes complexity for content authors, and offers more flexibility to developers.
The core of Silverstripe CMS is named Silverstripe Framework (formerly referred to as "Sapphire"). 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. The Silverstripe Framework provides website developers a framework to build and extend websites based on modern programming techniques including the
model-view-controller pattern and
object-relational mapper.
Silverstripe CMS generates
markup using a custom template-language based on
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
HTML5
HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...
that offers simple placeholders and conditional logic. Silverstripe CMS 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
Asset management is a systematic approach to the governance and realization of all value for which a group or entity is responsible. It may apply both to tangible assets (physical objects such as complex process or manufacturing plants, infrastr ...
,
image resizing, drag&drop images from OS desktop to upload.
* Multiple templates per page
*
Search engine friendly URLs,
metadata
Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive ...
management, XML
site map
A sitemap is a list of web page, pages of a web site within a Domain name, domain.
There are three primary kinds of sitemap:
* Sitemaps used during the planning of a website by its web design, designers
* Human-visible listings, typically hierarc ...
generation
*
Full text search and
RSS feeds
* Optimizations for heavy loads (full and part-template caching)
* Internationalization/Languages: Silverstripe CMS supports multiple-language content.
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit''. Almost every webpage is transmitted as UTF-8.
UTF-8 supports all 1,112,0 ...
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 CMS 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 CMS 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 can be used to extend the core functionality of Silverstripe CMS. Some existing modules include: Blog, Advanced Workflow Management, eCommerce, Forum, and LDAP/OpenID authentication. Modules are available from the Silverstripe CMS modules repository, which as of October 2022, lists over 3000 modules.
Silverstripe CMS
Widgets are small pieces of functionality that can be
drag-and-dropped into Silverstripe CMS modules (notably the blog module). Examples of widgets include: tag clouds, Flickr photos, or word of the day. Widgets are a relatively less-used aspect of the platform. As of August 2012, there are 96 widgets.
The Silverstripe CMS themes directory provides a number of community-contributed, freely available themes (114 as of October 2022).
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 CMS is a
web application
A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...
, requiring a compatible web server and SQL database. As of version 5.2, the requirements for Silverstripe CMS are as follows:
*
Apache v2.4+,
Lighttpd,
Nginx 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
MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...
v5.6.X+, Microsoft SQL Server (community maintained),
PostgreSQL (community maintained), SQLite3 (community maintained) or Oracle Database (experimental)
*
PHP ≥8.1, ≤8.2 with PHP extensions: ctype, dom, fileinfo, hash, intl, mbstring, session, simplexml, tokenizer and xml. The
gd or
imagick extension for image manipulation and an extension for a database connector is also required.
Documentation
Silverstripe CMS is released under the terms of the
BSD License. Documentation is available fo
CMS usersan
website developers An online demonstration of the CMS is available as a
interactive demo
Two technical reference books on Silverstripe CMS are available in English and one in German.
Recognition
Awards
* Winner Packtpub Most Promising CMS Award 2008, $2000 prize. Then was First Runner up, "Best Overall CMS" in 2009. Also Pact Publishing CMS Awards finalist in 2007.
* 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
* Hi-tech Awards - Finalist, Emerging Technology Company of the Year in 2017
* Hi-tech Awards - Winner, Best Technology Solution for the Public Sector in 2016
* ALGIM Conference - Winner, Best All Round Exhibitor in 2015 and in 2014
* Internet Industry Awards 2009 - The Positive Societal Impact Award for “The Lowdown” website. This site was also a finalist in 2008 for the TUANZ Innovation Awards.
* ALGIM Web Award - Winner, "Best Redevelopment Website, People’s Choice" for the Gisborne District Council website in 2009.
* 2009 World Summit Awards - Winner for the National Broadband Map, a site created for the State Services Commission
* 11th Annual Wellington Gold Awards - Finalist in 2009 and 2007
* 2008 ComputerWorld Excellence Awards - Finalist, "Innovative Use of IT"
Reviews and articles
Version 3.0 (latest as of November 2012)
* SSBits (10 September 2012)
Version 2
* SilverStripe Review (3 April 2009)
* Microsoft Case Study (17 March 2009)
* ReadWriteWeb, 14 September 2007
* Interview on New Zealand Television Show, 1 May 2007, (Video)
* Hiveminds Magazine, 15 March 2007
SilverStripe CMS is proof that open-source works
'
See also
*
Content management system
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...
*
List of content management systems
References
External links
*
{{Application frameworks
Free content management systems
Free software programmed in PHP
PHP frameworks
Software using the BSD license
Web frameworks
Software companies of New Zealand