SilverStripe

SilverStripe 2.3.1 eases installation and provides protection against website comment spam

Posted by Sigurd on 20 March 2009

Hot on the heels of SilverStripe 2.3.0 comes an update that resolves some bugs, adds support for six more languages in the CMS, and launches two great new features.

This release also contains important security fixes so we encourage you to upgrade.

• Download silverstripe-2.3.1.tar.gz or,
• Install a fresh SilverStripe 2.3.1 install using Windows Platform Installer. (Learn what this is.)
• Changelog
• File bugs at open.silverstripe.com and post general feedback as a comment below.

Mollom support to combat website spam

Mollom is a smart and cheap way to reduce unwanted comments and other website spam. It uses a combination of bayesian filters and CAPTCHAs to protect forms on your website. This release allows you to install Mollom code that protects:

• Page comments in the core product
• Blog comments in our blog module
• User Registrations in our forum module
• If your forum receives a lot of abuse, you can optionally enable Mollom to protect all forum posts.
• Hand-written (PHP) forms can be protected with a new field type called MollomField

To make use of Mollom, you must use SilverStripe 2.3.1, and install the just-released spamprotection-v0.1rc1.tar.gz and mollom-0.1.0rc1.tar.gz modules. The existing blog module will work as is, but to use it with our forum, you must upgrade to forum 0.2rc2. See our Mollom installation instructions. Please try it out and tell us what you think! This code has just been released, so if you find problems, be sure to write up bugs at open.silverstripe.com.

• See screenshots of Mollom in action
• The blog comment forms on silverstripe.com and silverstripe.org are now running this Mollom protection. You will notice it doesn't ask for a CATPCHA unless it thinks your comment is spammy!

(Note: The user forms module will be released later with Mollom support.)

Installing SilverStripe without a URL rewriter

A very common problem raised in our Installation Forum is trying to get a URL rewriter working, such as Apache's mod_rewrite. This is what provides SilverStripe with one of its popular features: human readable or "friendly" URLs. In the past we have been stringent about enforcing this, because we disagree strongly with websites that have complicated URLs. Without a URL rewrite, a SilverStripe address would look like website.com/sapphire/main.php?url=about-us.

Sam, however, recently committed some code that provides a great fallback strategy which means you can still get pleasant URLs without a URL rewriter. This will mean that a URL rewriter remains strongly encouraged, but is no longer a requirement.

This means you can now install SilverStripe on Microsoft IIS 5.1 and 6.0 (which don't have native URL Rewriters). It also helps those having difficulties with the free URL rewriters on Apache and Lighttpd.

New languages

Thanks to the great work of our community of translators, this release updates most of the CMS interface translations. In addition, it adds these new languages:

• Catalan (Andorra)
• English (United Kingdom)
• Spanish (Mexico) 
• Indonesian (Indonesia)
• Bokmål (Norway)
• Serbian (Serbia)

(Note: As with v2.3.0, this release does not complete our work allowing public facing website pages to be in multiple langauges. Our roadmap currently has this solved in v2.3.2.)

Again, thanks to the community for raising bugs and providing help with this release. If you're interested in helping out with upcoming versions or our community, read our contribution guide.