I’m still fairly new to the whole web development game but absolutely love working with silverstripe over other CMSs.
I’m just looking for input from others in the community to how you sell Silverstripe over the likes of Wordpress, specifically around the likes of Oxygen or Elementor. I always come across the barrier that people like the flexibility of these with wordpress, but haven’t found a way to offer comparable options in silverstripe.
Am I missing something? Am I using silverstripe wrong?
This isn’t a “this is better than that” argument, I’m just looking for insights on how you sell the one over the other, or if there’s something I’m missing to bring similar functionality (if I should even be doing that).
I’m in the same attempt of selling SilverStripe over WordPress and facing the same issues regarding the flexibility of design. Now that said there’s an integration for Elementor which I personally am not a fan of, and I’ve decided that I could propose more pre-build page templates to my clients. I already built a custom theme where we can select the color palette for the entire site, now I’m trying to do the same with fonts.
If you came across my question regarding SilverShop multistep checkout, that’s another example of the difficulties I have with SilverStripe where I try to make something existing as a module work, tried everything I could, but even after posting two different questions which technically shouldn’t be complicated to answer for someone working with SilverShop, I still have no answer. Meaning yes the module is there, but the documentation isn’t helpful in that case, and I can’t sell the solution on SilverStripe while I can install WooCommerce in less than 5 minutes with all options included.
So selling SilverStripe over WordPress is still very challenging, and I wish there was a straight forward solution, but I doubt you will find something comparable to WordPress unless you custom build it, which is what I attempt to do. It’s not easy at all, most of the time if ChatGPT isn’t able to give me some answer that I couldn’t find myself after hours of search, my last hope is that forum, and it’s not always fruitful.
That’s all I can say, I love SilverStripe and am grateful for it being open source and free with a community that I don’t really know much though. I try to promote it, but WordPress has that easy-to-click-and-it-actually-works-out-of-the-box power that SilverStripe has clearly not.
Thank you very much for your messages. It is very important for us to receive feedback.
Currently on the agenda is updating and improving our current documentation and creating new lessons. I would be very grateful if you could provide possible topics for lessons, an area that raises questions or difficulties. Perhaps you could suggest a convenient format, such as video or full courses that cover several topics in CMS, possible integration with third-party modules (where possible).
I can point out some topics where I spent hours to find a solution, it could potentially help other developers.
Now that I’ve built some complex websites which are basically social media type platforms, I get used to working with namespaces, SiteConfig, Ajax calls, Multistep forms, permissions, and I understand how to build modules, customize the CMS. It might be trivial for experts but in my view it’s a gold mine for web developers.
I can already point out some issues with the SilverShop documentation where the configuration isn’t obvious. I installed it and directly had some errors that I couldn’t understand, on a fresh install. I found out how to set the shipping rate and get the estimate in the cart, and I see the shipping rate line in the checkout and from there I’m completely stuck. I made a post requesting some insight but a video with an example would be very welcome.
Maybe also something explaining how to use SS_ERROR_LOG to troubleshoot the code.
One important thing is clarifying how to use api.silverstripe.org to find core functions, cause there’s tons of great things in there but I don’t see a starter digging into the API documentation without understanding how to explore it.
Thank you for the answer. I really appreciate it.
We are currently analysing existing documentation and tutorials, so your comment will be very helpful.
Unfortunately, I can’t help with SilverShop, since we don’t support this module.
Sorry, but the question about SS_ERROR_LOG is not entirely specific. The SS_ERROR_LOG environment variable specifies the path to the file where error information, warnings, and other information will be logged. It all depends on how developers use this information. Perhaps we will consider adding examples of the use of logging in Silverstripe projects
We will definitely look into possible improvements that we can make to our API documentation and search.
I grandly appreciate the effort to improve documentation.
Being fair also on the fact that SilverStripe has a certain learning curve and needs some time dedicated to fully discover, I find it much easier to find the information maybe because I just understand what it means directly.
Let’s say the Namespace concept took me months to even bother applying cause I didn’t even see why I would use them. Now that I have an entire system with members, sponsors, payments, likes and comments,… I fully embrace the concept and can navigate a module, find the function I want to use and eventually create an extension for the class. A year ago, I would maybe read the code but would never dare to think I could create an extension for a module.
So yes the documentation can be improved though I also keep in mind the fact that a developer needs to invest hours into the process.
Thank you again for your comments, it really means a lot to us. We will definitely take them into account when working on educational materials and documentation.
I wish you good luck and new Silverstripe projects
