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

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Feedback - why I did not continue SliverStripe


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19 Posts   6290 Views

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dhensby

Community Member, 253 Posts

30 October 2009 at 12:08pm

Yes, it is a shame that you have decided that you don't want to use SS. I find it is excellent.

Like others have said, it is much more of a developer's tool than an off the shelf anyone can extend it wordpress type thing (ie adding modules through the admin area). It allows a developer to make a site for a client completely bespoke, not allowing someone adding a module because they like the look of it.

I think that the main problem with the forums and IRC (this is just my opinion) is that most of the people using SS are companies and corporations that sell their service to others. I'm not saying that they don't want to help people so they have to come to them directly and pay, I'm just saying that they are busy people with paying clients that can't afford to be answering every call for help.

I try to do my bit on IRC and the Forums to help as many people as i can, but often i am very busy and either dont have time to help or if someone asks something that i dont *know* the answer to i wont chirp up.

However, i do feel the documentation is really good and with a little digging an answer can often be found.

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honeybunny

Community Member, 79 Posts

30 October 2009 at 1:04pm

Hi Alistair!
It's funny how experience colors our perceptions.

Where you perceive a day or two turn around on forum posts as lack of community support, I see SilverStripe's community support as wonderful, fabulous and more than acceptable. I tell myself to take the global view and remember that in many cases there is a substantial time difference between the person asking the question and the person most able to answer it. (It helps that most of the responses to posts seem to provide a genuinely useful answer.) Of course this is just my opinion based solely on the fact that the last cms I used had absolutely no support at all. (Once in a while someone would post to the forum but there were almost never any responses and the very few issues that were resolved were never shared publicly. Sometimes the original poster would post another message stating the problem was fixed but didn't generally explain how.)

As for the ease of implementing themes, modules and other features, I find SilverStripe extremely user friendly. I don't mean to harp on it, but my last cms experience was a nightmare. I was using Props and every step was a challenge. I eventually found a couple other users who told me that they had to completely rewrite all the php to get it to work. I thought it was an exaggeration, but after six months of having to hunt down multiple pieces of code spread over three or more files every time I wanted to make even the smallest change or addition to basic layout or content I realized they were right. In the end I gave up. I couldn't see how it would ever be something that I could set up and hand over to a co-worker or a client. Compared to that experience, SilverStripe is a breeze.

I'm sorry that SilverStripe didn't work for you. Like all open source projects this is a work in progress. With input and comments such as you have provided maybe it will one day meet your needs.

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Alistair George

Community Member, 8 Posts

30 October 2009 at 1:57pm

I'm sorry that SilverStripe didn't work for you. Like all open source projects this is a work in progress. With input and comments such as you have provided maybe it will one day meet your needs.

Hopefully, and thanks for others replies I didnt mean to start a flurry of defenders. Its obvious there are many of you that really like SS.

I havent gone, I'm simply battling with Netbeans trying to get the jolly thing to debug PHP. Its known to go belly-up anything outside its default php eg index.php is ok, but anything outside and the script just sails on breakpoints or not. Eclipse works fine.
Cheers all,
Al.

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dalesaurus

Community Member, 283 Posts

30 October 2009 at 4:37pm

This post is full of such nice things I can't help but wonder how much the lot of you are being paid.

IF THERE ARE KICKBACKS, I WANT IN ON IT!

Love your new pic, Mo!

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bummzack

Community Member, 904 Posts

30 October 2009 at 7:48pm

I must say that the community has greatly improved during the time I'm here. Thanks to guys like Mo, dalesaurus and others who keep giving advice on the forums. It's not surprising that the *big* CMS have large communities (even in different countries/languages), they have been around for ages.
I think there are enough posts praising the benefits of SilverStripe already, so I'm going to spare you (for now).

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AdamJ

Community Member, 145 Posts

30 October 2009 at 8:22pm

Edited: 30/10/2009 8:24pm

I recently started using a system called FoxyCart for ecommerce solutions, and absolutely love it. One of the key reasons for their success is that even with an extremely small team, they spend a significant amount of time supporting the forums. This means that its easier to use the system, and its much more welcoming to new users and also advanced users extending the system.

I've been using SilverStripe for a bit longer than FoxyCart, and while I've gotten a lot of help from the forums, and the IRC channel as well, I'd love to see more presence in the forums by the devs. Imagine if one or two devs from SS were given 1 - 2 hours in a day to spend supporting the forums, people would have their queries answered by guys who know the system, and so everyone's happy. Users get working websites on a great system, and the SS team build up their userbase with an active forum as more people get experience and can help others in turn.

Theres always the arguement against taking devs off the core work, like updates come out slower etc, but I think you need both to really succeed. Especially considering this is an open source system. The more active it appears to the rest of the internet, the more interest from developers, the more third party developers!

In the end though, I do love SilverStripe (although I don't love TinyMCE... But thats another story)

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Toni

Community Member, 7 Posts

30 October 2009 at 8:23pm

If a 68 year old geriatric like me can pick up and use the Silverstripe CMS without any help from anyone except this site and trying out the Demo program then Silverstripe is achieving its main goal of user friendliness.

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Mo

Community Member, 541 Posts

30 October 2009 at 11:35pm

I believe the Dev's spend a couple of hours, at a predefined time slot answering questions on IRC. My only issue with that is that they are on NZ time I am on UK time and a lot of other people are in non NZ time zones. I think a lot of those people would appreciate that time slot being dedicated to the forums, rather than IRC.

Also, I am glad you approve of the new Avatar, I hate to think I was putting people off by being too "cold" looking :)