This was a great opportunity to learn about open-source CMS SilverStripe directly from the company behind it (more precisely, Dan Hensby and Joel Edwards from SilverStripe UK in London). Dan delivered an in-depth workshop on how to get started with SilverStripe and build a website on top of it. One powerful feature of SilverStripe is that you can define relations between data objects with a few lines of code. As an example, we were able to quickly code up a staff page and assign properties to each member of staff and have those display in different views.

Some current PHP and development best practices were covered at the same time. These were the steps that the workshop went through:

• Getting a development environment up and running with Vagrant and Composer
• See how quick and easy it is to create a custom data schema and get a CMS interface for editing content
• Start showing the data that is managed in the CMS in front-end templates
• Learn how to implement forms on the frontend site and storing the submissions for CMS users to access

References/Resources:

• SilverStripe the open-source CMS http://www.silverstripe.org/
• SilverStripe the company: http://www.silverstripe.com/
• Vagrant for setting up a development environment: https://github.com/BetterBrief/vagrant-skeleton
• Meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/CodeHub-Bristol/events/225114136/
   
  

By Katja
Posted in Categories: silverstripe php content_management