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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

New silverstriper, plenty of questions :)


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6 Posts   1828 Views

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Richi

Community Member, 16 Posts

4 August 2011 at 12:36am

Hey there, I'm new here!

First of all, I wanna say hi from Austria/Liechtenstein and thank you for this awesome OS CMS you've created. I've watched all the features and I'm pretty impressed what you can do with Silverstripe. I decided to chose this CMS to work with in the next months.
I got some experience with Typo 3 and Wordpress, but as far as I can see, SS beats them all.

I have worked through the tutorials so far, but I have to admit, without having a developers background, not all of the tutorials content is crystal clear to me (eg. database building, php codes). But anyway, to build a easy site with your templates shouldn't be a problem.
Well, but thats not what I want, I wanna build a custom designed site, with some jquery and other candies.

So I decided to learn this CMS by doing my new project in SS.
I've already created my standard html template, wrote all the basic css and so on, so far, so goood.

To give you an idea of my project (screenshots attached):

Fullscreen Site with 3 Templates
Template 1 - Nearly no text, jquery script to toggle through background images (HomePage)
Template 2 - More Text, 2 collumn based layout (Page), standard background image
Template 3 - News and so on (ArticleHolder page)
Navigation: horizontal menu with dropdown, 2 layers (Menu1, Menu2)
FooterBar: Newsletter Signup, Facebook

That's it basically, nothing really special.

What I am asking for is some sort of advice how to start with. How are you doing this with silverstripe?
Am I supposed to alter your tutorial examples (most of my needs are not looked at in this tutorials).
Should I start from scratch with my html template and css? Should I take over all of Silverstripes classes and selectors into my css?

My big problem is, I never developed anything in the past, I just coded html, css, used given jquery modules/scripts, designed most of my time, and occasionally altered php code e.g. in wordpress.

What I am lookin for is not a complete solution, just some advice and hints to what I wrote in before.

Thank you in advance and best regards,

Richi

Edit: I appologise if I am in the wrong subforum, just move it, if it doesnt fit. I also appologise for my english, not my mother tongue.

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martimiz

Forum Moderator, 1391 Posts

4 August 2011 at 1:59am

Hi Richi, welcome to the forums :-)

The way I usually approach this, once the designs are done, is first create html mockups for the various pages. Next start to convert them to a SilverStripe theme. There is a nice tutorial here, that you might want to take a look at: http://www.ssbits.com/newbies/2010/building-a-theme-from-a-static-template/

Next for the extra functionality: you could start by leaving these bits hardcoded in your templates and then bit by bit replace them with dynamic code. Make an inventory of what you need, and then first check the SilverStripe modules and widgets for functionality that's already there (look at the 'Extenisions' menu item above).

Go one step at the time. If there are specific things you need help with, don't hesitate to ask the forums, there are always people around that will take you that step further...

Have a great time with SilverStripe!

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Richi

Community Member, 16 Posts

4 August 2011 at 2:10am

Hi Martimiz, thx for the warm welcome.

This tutorial looks good, also the site itself looks very helpful.
How come we dont know about this useful site when browsing silverstripe.org? ^^

Thank you for the hint how to approach all this step by step, since I'm on a hurry I am very happy I can leave most of the stuff hardcoded for now.

GREAT, you helped me very much for now +1 <3!
Anyway, I'm sure I'll be back :D

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Taffy

Community Member, 119 Posts

5 August 2011 at 11:24pm

Edited: 05/08/2011 11:24pm

Ssbits.com is run by a community member called Aram.

Also check out uncle cheese's www.leftandmain.com although this is more developer focused.

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Richi

Community Member, 16 Posts

31 August 2011 at 9:21pm

Okay guys, I got new challenges I can't master.

1) Why is the whole damn stuff so slow? I cant wait 1 minute every time I reload the page .... (created silverstripe-cache folder already).

2) Is there a possibility to create a field in the backend where I can write in a text which is shown in the template? (speaking language navigation)

3) How can I add another content area? 2 collumns with different content.

Your help is pretty much appreciated.

Thx for your answers

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martimiz

Forum Moderator, 1391 Posts

1 September 2011 at 12:06am

Edited: 01/09/2011 12:07am

As for why it is slow - are you referring to the website or the backend? Overall SilverStripe expects something of your servercapacity/memory. There are lots of posts on the forums about this topic and things you can do to speed it up...

As for the rest of your questions:

SilverStripe works fine out of the box, and there are a lot of modules available that will extend its functionality. But the strength of SilverStripe is that it lets developers add functionality extremely fast and easy - if you've some experience as a developer, that is.

Adding fields to the CMS is one of the prime things you'll be doing if you want to develop for SilverStripe - and I'd strongly advice you to follow the tutorials, because that's exactly what they'll focus on right from the start - and that will probably answer most of your questions...

http://doc.silverstripe.org/sapphire/en/tutorials