I have looked at many of the systems similar to Silverstripe.
This program seems to have the cleanest interface and code.!
I have some custom web sites that stand alone. Meaning they could be on their own url, or just in subfolders on a common url. What I would like to do is use Silverstripe to build a nice interface to this custom work, as well as have it manage the access to the stand alone content. The idea would be to use Silverstripe as my user control interface, instead of coding one. I would like to allow some users to see some sites, others not. I would be interested in passing session data to the standalone content, in order to provide an audit trail.

I hope my explanation is not too vague. It seems like the level of granularity of this product is amazing. I like the look and feel. It would allow me to make a beautiful graphic environment. However, I still need to have my custom web applications run on their own. Just being under the umbrellas of Silverstripe.

Any comments would be helpful. I want to make sure I am not attempting the impossible before I dig in.

I really like SilverStripe too and my clients don't have a single problem creating content. The code is ok, a lot of bloat though -- could be way cleaner...

As to your question: If you know your way around PHP, the framework will not hinder you from any of your work.

What I was hoping to do is to take Silverstripe and use it for some of the more mundane tasks of building the website.
Allowing my customers to update their own content and images, etc.
The big thing, however, is that I need to have user level control over other custom web applications within the Silverstripe site that I would build.
I see a big value in allowing a site administrator to control their users in a common way, specifically without me having to write the code.
I am hoping to learn how to do this.