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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

(Re)Starting a web site


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2 Posts   728 Views

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aMLC

Community Member, 1 Post

9 February 2016 at 4:24am

Hey all,

The reason I am writing here is to ask you whether or not I should, in your opinion, use this CMS for the needs and functionalities listed below, and I'll be glad if you'd have additional tips or comments to give me.

I have currently begun working on a personal project in web programming, as part of a preparatory year to enter an Ingeneering school.

It is my first time working with a CMS, and I've been programming small projects in HTML/CSS, Javascript, C, PhP, MySQl and Java since last September during the preparatory year's first semester. I have a correct - yet still superficial - overview of what can be done and on which technology I may want to rely in the field of web programming. But it isn't sufficient for me to decide by myself which framework to use in order to go through this project.

I have begun analysis this week, and am currently filling a statistical sheet on about eleven selected frameworks, to define which ones will best fit my needs.

About the website :

It is an already running website, created with WordPress on a dedicated OVH server (providing web, mail and FTP hosting on one domain, x-roi.ch).

My main ojectives are:

- the implementation of a wiki (with useful infos about how to prepare scouting activities)
- the simplification, for non-adept users, of practical tools such as
managing an agenda
managing pictures folders for public display and download
edition of the wiki articles
- last but not least : keeping an interface for the webmaster to rely on, because he doesnt work in the field

Aside form those, I would like to rework the login system to let the "managers" (regarding obj. 2) only use specifically crafted pages to work on. That means being able to change data on the website whilst avoiding working on a dashboard, or by using a very simplified workflow(actually many of my colleagues don't even bother trying because of the very dense and first-hand complicated aspect of the WordPress backend dashboard).

We also have two forms(for notifications, questions or subscription to our scout group) and a few simple controllers over those.

We use very few articles for our website and don't post news, except from the online agenda. The articles aren't often edited, and it will be the webmasters task to edit them.

The agenda is a key feature of our website, as much for the parents than for the persons responsible for the kids. We only use its month view, with "secret" events visible when logged in as an authority. We would like to enable small popups to show onclick for details display(redirects us currently to another page).

The wiki is the current most important step, and I'm already looking forward to use the MediaWiki CMS to implement it aside from the main website. I've been told there will not be any compatibility problem as we can install the framework in another subdomain for itself(I'll figure out myself to what extent).
My colleagues have to be able to read, edit and print a formatted pdf of any of those articles, as well as upload and link - when editing those articles - useful files for download.

Again, it is vital that our webmaster may be able to manage the domain with as much help as possible from the interface, though he is able to tweak small code (mainly html, css, php and WordPress tags) with tutorial help.

At last, it would be a plus if your CMS allows us to customize the website appearance.

Thanks in advance for your answer !

Best regards,

Fridolin Sallin

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swaiba

Forum Moderator, 1899 Posts

9 February 2016 at 8:35pm

I've not read everything you wrote - but the answer is always the same with silverstripe... firstly *you* must be a coder - this is wordpress where you point and click to install and configure modules. If you are expecting 1000's of free themes then think wordpress... silverstripe has insanely flexible presentation layer which is used by professionals - who do expect a cost in developing custom themes.

Hope this helps