I'm new to SilverStripe as well, and first off, I'm very impressed. I'd characterize it as an "everything you need, nothing you don't" type of CMS.

Unfortunately, the one functionality showstopper in implementing it for our group is the lack of hierarchical URLs.

One solution that I haven't seen mentioned in any of the posts on the topic (although I may have just missed it!) is to use the site navigation hierarchy to determine URLs. In the current model, lets say we had a top level page called "AboutUs", (URL "/AboutUs/"), and then a subpage called "Our Staff" (URL "/OurStaff/"). What would make sense to me is rather than ONLY having a top level URL, to use that page-subpage relationship to determine the URL, and give the subpage a URL of "/AboutUs/OurStaff/".

Since those page-subpage relationships are already in the database, I would think it would be possible to only specify the URL fragment (i.e. "OurStaff") for the subpage in the user interface, and have it build out the hierarchy in another field in the database to use in conjunction with the mod_rewrite rule.

This way, the URL is absolutely tied to the hierarchy in the interface, and there's no manual maintenance (which we definitely don't want!) or ambiguity (Did someone mean their "Products/Services" page, or is "Services" a subpage of products?").

As far as fixing the hierarchy if you change a parent, we'd know when the parent changed, so we could then go through and update URL for the children.

Just off the top of my head, I'd suggest something along these lines:

- Add a "FullURL" field to the "SiteTree" table.

- Create a "calculateFullURL" MySQL procedure that would concatenate the parent's "FullURL" field with the subpage's "URLSegment" field. This procedure would also recursively run itself for all of its children.

- Create "update" and "insert" triggers on the SiteTree table to run that procedure.

- Modify the code that does that initial lookup to use the "FullURL" field rather than the "URLSegment" field.

- Modify the user interface so that on the form where you're specifying the URL segment, it prepends the parent's FullURL as text to the text box where you specify the URL segment.

Of course, that's a very simplified version, and you could also execute the same logic in PHP. It's just easier for me to describe in SQL terms since I haven't really looked into the code.

what about implementing the sublevel urls using the PageHolder/Page system you have developed as an standard for category/page?

looks pretty intelligent to me have something like this implemented.

if you want a url like animals/dog

you need to have at least 2 classes, one AnimalsHolder and one AnimalsPage for do the trick.
so the urls become mysite.com/AnimalsHolder/AnimalsPage

sounds coherent?

The web is based on URLs. A URL is a unique id for a resource. Unfortunately all the big content management systems I've ever tested break this and force the user to have a completely flat structure i.e., if the pages were actual files, they'd all be in the same directory. Some then try and cludge some URLs to make it look like there's a structure to the site.

I've tested 20+ CMSs this weekend trying to find one that does things properly to be used as an eCommerce site and I've found one. Unfortunately it's not mature enough to give to a non-developer so the search continues.

Edit
Just found one via OpenSourceCMS called Website Baker. I have no idea how good it is, but it got this part right.

There is a patch in development that supports sub URLs. I've only tested it shortly on a development SS setup, and it seemed to work nicely. Can't say how stable it is, as I only just played around with it - nothing too serious.

http://sstest.grayzagdesign.com/nested-urls-dev/