Silverstripe CMS 6.0.0 is here

Silverstripe CMS 6.0.0 has gone stable, and it’s setting the stage for the next two years of development.

As a reminder, the purpose of a major release is to allow us to make changes that we can’t safely include in a minor release, often called “breaking changes”. These can include dependency upgrades, improving our underlying architecture, and removing technical debt. See the major release policy for more details.

This means the focus for this release was not new features—though some new functionality has been unlocked as a result of the changes we have made.

Changes to supported modules

Part of the major release cycle includes an update to the list of modules which receive commercial support. We’ve evaluated the list of modules which had commercial support in CMS 5 and found that some of these are no longer necessary, others no longer align with the broader direction Silverstripe CMS is heading, and some would be better maintained by the community members who use them.

Some modules which are losing commercial support are being made compatible with CMS 6 but will rely on community efforts to maintain them going forward. Other modules will not be made CMS 6 compatible unless the community decides to upgrade them.

Note that we’ve refined this list several times since the alpha release, so it is likely slightly different than last time you looked at it.

If a module which is losing commercial support is important to you, we welcome you to become a maintainer! Email community@silverstripe.org to let us know if you’re keen.

To see which modules have lost commercial support, see the 6.0.0 changelog.

You can find the list of modules which will continue to be commercially supported for CMS 6 in the commercially supported modules page.

Upgrade process

The exact steps required to upgrade from Silverstripe CMS 5 will differ from project to project, but the general concepts should be the same. We strongly recommend taking the time to look through the full CMS 6.0 changelog to understand what changes will affect your projects.

There is no official upgrade tool, but the community has created some tools based on rector that might help automate some of the copy/paste changes (e.g. for updating references to classes which have been renamed or moved to a new namespace).

In general, if you start up upgrading to Silverstripe CMS 5.4, turn on deprecation warnings, and resolve all of the deprecations you can before updating your composer constraints, our hope is that the deprecation warnings you noted but couldn’t resolve along with information in the changelog should provide you with a clear upgrade path.

That said, please raise GitHub issues if you encounter any unexpected problems which have not been called out in the changelog. Unless you report them, we won’t be aware of any regressions, upgrade pains, or improvements we could make to the changelog.

Specific changes to be aware of

Major releases include breaking changes by their nature, and while we do what we can to minimise upgrade pains, some changes will inevitably be more disruptive than others.

These are areas we think will need the most attention for scoping your upgrades and for regression testing.

• Many classes have been renamed or had updated namespaces
• Many extension hooks have been renamed
• DBField is now validated and FormField validation has changed
• SiteTree uses form field scaffolding for getCMSFields

Note that this is just our best guess - each project will have its own challenges. We recommend looking through the entire changelog to find out what changes are most likely to affect your specific project.

What happens if I can’t upgrade right away?

We get that major releases come with some uncertainty, and take more planning and budgeting than minor releases. Our release policies have been designed with that in mind.

Silverstripe CMS 5.4 will have support for two years

If you’re on any version below Silverstripe CMS 5.4, you should aim to upgrade to at least that minor release. CMS 5.4 will have full support for all bug fixes and security patches for one year until April 2026, and then another year of partial support, which covers high and critical severity security patches.

Silverstripe CMS 4 is no longer supported

If your website is still running Silverstripe CMS 4, you no longer have any level of official support. This means if there are new security vulnerabilities discovered, they won’t be patched. You should aim to upgrade to at least CMS 5.4 as soon as you can.

What happens next?

We’ve already started development on Silverstripe CMS 6.1 which is scheduled to release in October this year. We’re also working on a public roadmap so that you can get a preview of some of the big ticket items that will be coming out in future releases.

To keep on top of future releases, check out the support timeline.

For fortnightly previews of what the CMS Squad is working on, go to the CMS Squad progress update tag in the forums.

Keen to get your upgrade underway?

Talk to your Digital Agency or Developer about upgrading

Haven’t got a Developer or Agency? No problem! Browse the Silverstripe CMS Developer Network and filter by location to find a Silverstripe CMS Developer near you.

Or reach out to Silverstripe directly to upgrade your project.

Developers, check out our documentation

This release announcement does not cover the full detail of what is included in the release. Be sure to review the full changelog before planning your next site upgrade.

Note that the structure and some wording in the changelog for this release has been updated since the release candidate.

Head to our Developer Docs to view the CMS 6.0 changelog.