Blog
Speeding up SilverStripe with the Configuration System
One of our focuses in SS3 has been to improve on performance. All frameworks have to maintain a balance between features and performance, and generally SilverStripe has done that pretty well. In SS3 we haven't looked to adjust that balance, but instead looked at the features that cause the biggest performance issues, and see what we can do to refactor them so that we provide the same functionality in a more efficient manner.
Since I'm working on the configuration system this week to do just that, I thought it would be appropriate to talk a bit about it, to give you an idea about how we tackle the task of keeping or improving the feature set while still improving performance. Hold on, because this is likely to get a little technical.
SilverStripe can change your life
Colin Burns is a digital nomad and respected SilverStripe community member, who travels the world while making a living out of building websites and web projects using SilverStripe. Colin is originally from Australia and now travels the world with his wife and two children.
You'll have to let me indulge a little in this blog post to first explain how SilverStripe has changed my family's life. I would like to provide you with some background before I get to the crux of the story.
The fine print of building your business with SilverStripe
A lot of people use the SilverStripe suite to build awesome web solutions for themselves or their clients. SilverStripe is very proud of the many beautiful websites, applications, modules and themes that you build with the CMS and the Framework. We know that you put a lot of hard work and passion into building these things, so I guess it is just a natural transgression to turn this effort into a business and to actually start making money from it.
The SilverStripe suite is running under a BSD licence, which means that every developer/designer owns the right to their code and can sell it if they wish to. That makes setting up a business much easier for SilverStripe users.
The 3.0 UI: A better framework for your ideas
SilverStripe has always regarded the CMS as a natural extension of its framework, enabling developers to tailor it to the needs of website authors. You can add form fields, customise the behaviour of the WYSIWYG editor, add custom icons for the page tree, as well as create completely new sections via the ModelAdmin class. On the other hand, deeper interface customisations were hard to achieve due to the complexity of the code behind it. The 3.0 release provides us with a rare opportunity to consolidate and simplify here.
The CMS is built using most of the tools and techniques SilverStripe developers are already familiar with when creating websites with the framework; object-oriented controllers and utility classes like CMSMenu, templates which inherit based on PHP classes, and the Form/FormField APIs. This symmetry is important to us, and the reason we decided against using full-fledged JavaScript frameworks which would define all of this on the client. Instead we’re relying on a base set of common tools such as jQuery and jQuery UI, coupled with the principles of ‘progressive enhancement’.
Core Developer Ingo Schommer sees SilverStripe Maturing
Today I virtually met with 29-year-old German Senior Developer Ingo Schommer, who is an icon in the SilverStripe community. He is the person that bundles a lot of the community’s contributions and feeds it back into the core. @Brooke Penny says; every time she hears his name she thinks of David Schwimmer from Friends. (Apparently Ingo even resembles him, except for the fact that Ingo hasn’t had a nose job).
In his free time Ingo loves to work on documentation for SilverStripe which eventually resulted in a book. He also has the most impressive 80’s pop music collection in his iTunes library. Going back in time also meant moving to Germany a few months ago. Due to the time difference between NZ and DE, he now works crazy hours remotely for SilverStripe. Please send this poor guy some ‘Flat Whites’ if you can. (‘Flat Whites’ are the NZ coffee specialty. Caution: Addiction guaranteed!)
SilverStripe 3’s new ORM
Sam Minnée, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of SilverStripe, has shaped the SilverStripe Suite and is part of its success story as an internationally respected Open Source CMS.
One of the parts of SilverStripe 3 that I was most heavily involved with was the development of the new ORM. ORM stands for “Object-relational mapper” and it’s the part of the system that turns your DataObject::get() calls into SQL queries, and constructs relevant DataObjects with the results. In other words, it maps our PHP objects to a relational database for storage.
Wellington's October SilverStripe Meetup
Thanks to everyone who came along to our October Wellington Meetup. Word on the street is that it was one of our most popular meetups for 2011, with approximately 30 people attending.
Our MC for the evening was co-founder Sigurd Magnusson who kicked the event off, followed by presentations by community member Cam Findlay and SilverStripe Head of Developement Rainer Spittel. We have included videos of both presentations below, along with accompanying slides. See you all in the new year! Our next meetup is scheduled for January.
SilverStripe 3.0 alpha 1 is ready to download
It’s been a while since we gave you the SS 3.0 preview to play around with earlier in the year. Now we are getting serious. We are proud and excited to announce that SilverStripe CMS 3.0 alpha 1 and SilverStripe Framework 3.0 alpha 1 are ready to download and test now.
We’ve made the new CMS faster and more flexible. It shows an outstanding new user interface and last but not least; we separated the framework from the CMS and made it its own entity.
Last Chance to Vote for PacktPub's 2011 Open Source Awards
There are only a few more days to vote for SilverStripe in PacktPub’s 2011 Open Source Awards. Public voting closes on Monday 31 October. We are proud to be a finalist in the Open Source CMS category. Last year we came in second and this year we are eager to take home the grand prize!
Why Design Comes First: True Confessions of a Guilty Coder
Guest blogger Aaron Carlino is a web developer who is better known in the SilverStripe community by his whimsical pseudonym Uncle Cheese. Aaron has been doing web development since 2005, and found his niche in SilverStripe programming after an exhaustive search for a content management solution that was welcoming to developers and would stay out of his way. Since then, he has established a strong reputation in the SilverStripe community as a mentor, support provider, and, most notably, a contributor to some of the application’s most popular modules.
Rapid Prototyping with SilverStripe & Foundation
Guest blogger Ryan Wachtl is an independent US-based web developer and information architect with a passion for the art of programming and the science of design. He has been building sites with SilverStripe since the early 2.2 release and organizes the Read on
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