Hello!

I've been looking through all the sites and google for any Silverstripe courses / education classes, but I can't find a single one.

Are there any courses available, and if so, where can I find information about them?

Regards,
Andreas Saarva.

My company is willing to pay for any courses available, so that me and my team (4 people total) may learn Silverstripe and all it's magic.

The "magic" is quite amazing, but you need to know how to use it tho. With files everywhere, no specific structure or logic, it takes alot of time to edit someone else's code. It does go fast to build something, but updating/editing is a pain in the bottom.

Is there some kind of structure tool, that would show the map of a certain module, all its files, links, database tables etc? (To make it easier to edit existing code, finding related files and database tables)

Regards,
Andreas.

Although the silverstripe docs (docs.silverstripe.org) are very clear, It's true that online resources for silverstripe are hard to find.
There are a few sites which are (partly)dedicated to silverstripe (www.ssbits.com and www.leftandmain.com), but it's been a long time since they've published something new.

The rather small community is a bit of a negative side of silverstripe, but that's hardly a deal breaker because of the fantastic cms and framework. All our clients are very satisfied with the tremendous userfriendly interface and developers are very happy with the flexibility with which they can customize the cms to the client's needs.

So... this is a callout to all you silverstripe developers out there.... please let's make it a better/bigger community all together

guy

So... there is no courses or anything, I have to read the outdated documents and learn Silverstripe by myself? :)

My company has a big interest in teaching our team (4 new employees) Silverstripe, and would pay for any courses. Is this nothing you have had in mind, or you just focus on developing the CMS?

Maybe you want to put some more effort in the community, rather then having the community putting effort in you?

PS. By outdated, I mean the forum posts and examples, that you find from various Silverstripe community members on google, made years ago. It's really hard to find new posts, threads, blog posts or websites that explains Silverstripe in a good and easy way for new developers to just dive into it.

An idea I had was if there was some kind of visual map of the manifest, so that you could backtrack stuff. I mean the CMS works great, everything "just works". So building something new, is very effiecient and doesn't require much.
BUT, editing someone elses code, or finding bugs is a pain in the a**... with files anywhere, that could be a vital part of a module or piece of code, it takes way too much time to fix stuff... Any plans on making this easier?

Regards,
Andreas Saarva.

I think our documentation is maybe not really complete, but if you want a "good and easy way for new developers", I mean, this is the best place to start.

http://doc.silverstripe.org/framework/en/
http://api.silverstripe.org/3.0/

My company has a big interest in teaching our team (4 new employees) Silverstripe, and would pay for any courses. Is this nothing you have had in mind, or you just focus on developing the CMS?

I recommend consulting the SilverStripe Developer network (or Partner network) or firms in your area that have experience with SilverStripe and get in touch with them for training and support as they can give you really good help. For a local firm in NZ I am currently producing videos and training documentation for a similar company (new 4+ developers) but each company we work for wants very specific documentation which won't be able to be released for the community of Developers.

Jump on the IRC channel and the community will happily help solve and point you in the right direction if you cannot find it in the documentation.

The books are still valuable guides if you can get your hands on those. They are out of date due to 3.0's release but they explain the concepts quite well. I do not know of any new books in the worlds since the last ones were such a large commitment to complete.

BUT, editing someone elses code, or finding bugs is a pain in the a**... with files anywhere, that could be a vital part of a module or piece of code, it takes way too much time to fix stuff... Any plans on making this easier?

I'm not sure what other systems you've used but SilverStripe is probably the easiest system I've used to navigate around. A good editor makes a huge difference to developing. Open by filename is incredibly handy, jump to symbol etc. I use Sublime Text 3 and it's a joy. Open the file by looking for the name, ctrl+r to see a list of all the methods. Eclipse style jump to parent definition also is supported so you can see Parent class hierarchy.

Also should mention if you want to commission videos / documentation I am more than happy to provide those services. Discounts available for any of my work that is allowed in the public domain. Give me an email to will@fullscreen.io if you want to discuss more.

I've actually used quite some CMS's, last one used being OnClick CMS, developed by the swedish company I previously worked for.

My current issue:
For example, we have 2 websites, which uses Silverstripe. Website 2 needs to update the treemenu module, which we currently have on Website 1. I added the new externals, and updated the treemenu. Now it doesnt load Silverstripe because it's missing 2 templates (TreeMenuFooter.ss and TreeMenuDefault.ss), which did not come with the update of the module. So, previously using an older version of the treemenu on Website 2, my boss told me there had to be templates somewhere for ~Footer and ~Default. I do not find any treemenu templates at all.

When looking at Website 1, the templates are located in /themes/TEMPLATE_NAME/templates/Includes/Menu/. This is obviously not a default template folder for the treemenu module, so I looked in the module code to find some kind of configuration declaring the custom template folder, without result. How does the module know that custom folder path, and why did the developer put them there, rather then in the actual treemenu module template folder? What was his reason for that?

I tried to copy the /themes/TEMPLATE_NAME/templates/Includes/Menu/ folder to Website 2, in the same path. But the module doesn't find it. My boss told me there might be a "decorator" somewhere else in all the hundred folders, where it declares the custom template path for the treemenu module. Why is the treemenu decorator in a complete other folder, how does this logic work? Why not just collect everything related to one module, in that modules folder? How do I know where to find an external decorator belonging to a module, if it's not in that modules folder? Do I have to read the 12´000 rows manifest?

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Don't take me wrong please, I know I sound very pessimistic, but I really want to learn the logic of Silverstripe... you say it's so simple to find stuff, related files etc... but it's not, not for me or my 3 new developer colleagues. We all struggle to understand Silverstripe, and 3 of us have our own CMS we're working on, with many years knowledge of different CMS's (not complete rookies in the CMS field).

All I want is a guide/documentation, that explains the "logics" of Silverstripe, focusing on the architecture and structure of the functionality of this CMS.

PS. I know there are documentations, that briefly explains some basics of the Silverstripe architecture, but it's not complete enough to explain all of the logics. This is where we struggle. Everything else is very easy, code wise etc.

Kind Regards,
Andreas Saarva.