Lastnight’s event at Indy Hall (Classic) welcomed Kiwi-created SilverStripe, an Open Source CMS, to Philly. Sigurd Magnusson, one of the co-creators of SilverStripe gave a presentation about the history of his project, the future of the CMS, and answered some questions from the community. The question that always comes up, and was burning at least one member of the audience’s tongue, is how the SilverStripe project differs from the Holy One - Drupal. I can now very vividly imagine a conversation between Sigurd and Dreys on the topic, which makes me giggle. As it stood lastnight, Sigurd pointed out the emphasis on MVC model in Sapphire (the framework that powers the CMS) and how that carries over into the functionilaity of the CMS, along with the out-of-the-box approachability of the system. That coupled with the focus in the presentation on simplicity and usability for all levels of people who use the CMS, was the balance of Sigurd’s response.
I’d go a few steps further and talk about the ease of installation and the approachability of the templating language, when compared to the mammoth un-approachability of Drual for anyone without a solid knowledge of PHP. SilverStripe’s install process is the same as Wordpress, with a browser-based install screen to enter all database details and run the installation. In addition, the intuitive back-end user interface is easily approachable for novice web producers at all levels, making it cheaper and easier to adopt into an organization.
It was rather illuminating hearing the history of the project, how a group of teenagers in New Zeland started to work towards building a better platform in 2000. They produced sites to test their tool’s limits and improve functionality. The decision to go Open Source was made in 2006, and since that time downloads and users have skyrocketed. Now, with a new polished branding and a solid reputation, SilverStripe is moving into maturity as a CMS, extending invitations to development partners across the word, and still testing and developing new features.
Howdiz and I are super-stoked on SilverStripe after lastnight’s event, and we’re going to focus in on it more and more. We have a few sites already running on SilverStripe, and are working on some freelance projects right now built on SilverStripe. I’m excited to see how Howdiz webdev skillz change the way I use the CMS.
In Summary: Despite the non-locative nature of the medium of the web, there is much to learn from putting a face with a tool - I feel more connected with the project than I ever have before. I’m working on a series of tutorials about getting SilverStripe up-and-running, and musing over the idea of putting together a series of workshops to help people get comfortable with the system. It would be awesome to see a strong community emerge in Philly around this humble yet powerful website management tool.