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General Questions /

General questions about getting started with SilverStripe that don't fit in any of the categories above.

Moderators: martimiz, Sean, Ed, biapar, Willr, Ingo, swaiba

Love SS but...


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9 Posts   3627 Views

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te_chris

Community Member, 24 Posts

18 June 2010 at 12:11pm

Hey guys,

My name's Chris and I'm a PHP Dev based in Dunedin currently spending all my time building a start-up web app type business. I'm coding in SilverStripe (well, sapphire to be more precise) and I must say, Sapphire is a GREAT framework, however I don't think enough devs know this. I feel like, though it has got you to where you are now, marketing SS as a CMS is selling short the power and dev-friendlyness of Sapphire. I know, who am I, some upstart with big ideas blah blah blah...but I guess I just wanted to find out what the status of Sapphire is? I've done quite a bit of work in Code Igniter (but seriously, php4, nah....) and I think their model is one that should be looked at for SS/Sapphire. Even though Sapphire is a FAR better framework than CI, I feel that the support for sapphire in particular is lacking because it is still under the banner of the CMS thus most devs won't take it seriously. Sure, obviously I do but what I'm getting to is: Have you guys ever thought of going the CI/ExpressionEngine route of separating the framework from the CMS in order to gain a bigger Dev community for the framework?

I may be crazy, but my main interest is making SS/Sapphire better, promise!

Chris

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Jedateach

Forum Moderator, 238 Posts

18 June 2010 at 1:22pm

Hi Chris,

I have yet to see a Sapphire-based app that doesn't use the CMS at all, but I understand a lot of work has been done to separate Sapphire and the CMS. It's probably possible now to build a sapphire app that doesn't integrate with the CMS. A SilverStripe team member could confirm this.

Myself, I've built a separate back-end for managing 'launches' on LaunchBug.co.nz. I still use the CMS also for managing other pages on the site.

Jeremy

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te_chris

Community Member, 24 Posts

18 June 2010 at 3:15pm

Hey Jedatech,

I actually think it could be more simple than that (and concurrently complex...hmmm). I guess what I was getting at is that it seems that, when developers look for a framework, they discount anything that doesn't market itself purely as a framework, no matter how suitable. I mean when I first started looking I did the same thing, I imagine it's pretty standard behaviour. I think SS needs to come up with a way to push sapphire as a framework that comes (like django) with an admin interface while maintaining the great work they've done marketing it as a pure CMS.

Given the actual product is so interlinked the CI/EE example is probably too far removed but think there's a better way to market SS to php app devs rather than CMS devs.

Hope I'm not insulting anyone!

Chris

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Willr

Forum Moderator, 5523 Posts

18 June 2010 at 3:57pm

This is something we looked at went this new ssorg design went live - The homepage specific has a paragraph on the cms and one on the framework. We also added a dedicated sapphire page - http://silverstripe.org/sapphire/ In the future we're looking to make this even more obvious and make the cms just another 'module' for the sapphire framework. At the moment sapphire is still to tightly coupled to the cms to really make sapphire useful without the CMS. But yes this is something that is going to be made more clearer in the future.

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solar

10 Posts

25 June 2010 at 6:55am

I don't know, the fact that the CMS and Framework came together in one package is why I started using SS, else I would have used another. But I guess the option to install or start a project with or without the CMS would be nice.

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te_chris

Community Member, 24 Posts

22 August 2010 at 10:55pm

Just to update this:

I'm building a Sapphire app at present. You've probably seen a couple of my stupid questions on the forums but in general, Sapphire is a great framework to develop with. I just feel a bit alone sometimes :D

I looked at CI, but php 4 can f-off. I looked at cake, but Sapphire is cleaner. It isn't as full-featured and doesn't have the same amount of modules, but I haven't found too much missing thus far. I just think that some sort of place where App development is focused on, rather than CMS development could help - maybe even just a sub-forum? A proper guide to how to dev without the CMS as well would be good too, though once i'm further along my dev cycle I'm planning on writing something like this in blog post form when I get the time.

I think if app developers could see that they could use Sapphire as another, really awesome framework then you'd be onto something - also as people use it for that purpose then more modules will likely be contributed too.

my 6c by now, I guess.

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Mo

Community Member, 541 Posts

1 September 2010 at 10:06am

I am currently building an Intranet system that does not use the CMS at all. I have tried other frameworks, both PHP and Python based, but Sapphire ticks so many boxes for me.

I especially like how mobile it is, really simple to move an app to another server.

I have always thought that just calling SilverStripe a CMS is selling it short. I would call it more of a Content Management Framework myself.

Mo

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dendeffe

Community Member, 135 Posts

1 September 2010 at 9:24pm

Edited: 01/09/2010 9:25pm

The great thing about CodeIgniter is how well documented the framework is (http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/). This makes it really easy to get started, certainly for less experienced PHP developers like me.

I think having something similar for Saphire would really boost adoption.

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