What’s in the box?
Silverstripe CMS comes with a host of features out-of-the-box including:
Silverstripe CMS
The best CMS you’ve never heard of.
At Bigfork we design and develop a lot of B2B websites using Silverstripe CMS, because we wholeheartedly believe it’s one of the best content management systems on the market, and our clients agree.
Secure
Silverstripe CMS offers enterprise level security as standard. This means your website and data is secure, so you don’t end up with a hacked website or unexpected downtime.
Flexible
It’s designed to be built upon, so if something doesn’t come as standard, we can create it. This means you have the flexibility to grow your website to meet your ongoing needs.
Fast
Some CMSs rely on plugins for functionality. Silverstripe CMS doesn’t need these as it has loads of features as standard. So, there’s nothing to slow your website down, which is great for user experience and great for SEO.
SEO friendly
It has full SEO management built in, including sitemaps, meta titles and descriptions, HTML headings (H1, H2 etc.), image alt text, redirects, Google Analytics / Tag Manager integration, breadcrumbs and auto-generated schema.
Fully supported
Silverstripe CMS is commercially backed by Silverstripe (the company). as well as developers around the world, including the Bigfork web development team (we’re a Silverstripe partner by the way). This means updates and features are constantly being developed to keep it at the cutting edge of modern web technologies.
Free
There are no license fees and no paid plugins. Silverstripe is “open source” which means the code and documentation are readily available to any developer. It’s built in PHP (the same language as WordPress) so if you want to bring web development in-house, or leave Bigfork for any reason, you’ll easily be able to take your site over.
It’s super easy to use
Ease of use is where the Silverstripe CMS really shines.
The interface is slick, responsive, consistent and intuitive, making it simple to manage your website on a day-to-day basis.
More features:
Website page editing
Create, publish, edit and remove pages as you wish. The powerful block-based editor gives you the freedom to create different layouts without needing any special web design skills.
News articles
Create blogs and news pages, including categories, tags and authors. Automatically expire old articles (if you wish), and schedule future articles.
Previews and history
All pages and posts can be saved to draft, previewed, shared via a draft link for checking, and then published when ready. Made a mistake? Just use the history feature to revert to a previous version.
Custom fields
All content in Silverstripe can be expanded to include custom fields, which allow extending the standard functionality. Need a gallery in a blog post, or a custom call to action in every page? Custom fields can do it.
User roles and workflows
Allow different users access to different areas of the CMS with user roles. For example, you could have different permissions for editing news articles compared to editing product pages. Workflows take it a step further, allowing users to submit edits for approval before being allowed to publish.
Automatic image optimisation
Images are automatically resized, so your website doesn’t get slowed down. The resizing is dynamic based on screen size, so phone users automatically see smaller images which are faster to load.
Forms
Silverstripe has forms built in and doesn’t require a plugin for them. It includes multi-step forms, dynamic fields, validation and ReCAPTCHA (anti-spam). Forms can also be made editable, even as content blocks so they can be inserted into pages as required.
Search
Web pages, news articles and documents are searchable as standard. We often enhance this with search suggestions or integrations with powerful third-party search tools such as Algolia.
SEO management
You have full control over your SEO including meta titles and descriptions, HTML headings (H1, H2 etc.), image alt text and redirects. It also includes Google Analytics / Tag Manager integration, breadcrumbs and auto-generated sitemaps and schema.
Website menus
Silverstripe supports both dynamic menus based on your website structure, and custom menus which can be maintained manually. These give you full control over how you display your website navigation to your users.
Media library
All media can be uploaded directly into pages or posts, however you can also manage it through a central media library. Advanced features include file replacement (no need to upload a new PDF and find everywhere you linked it) and focal point for image cropping.
Integrations
Silverstripe can integrate with many other systems, we’ve connected it up to all sorts including Hubspot CRM, Stripe payments, Equifax credit history, LinkedIn jobs and bespoke third-party APIs.
Don’t just take our word for it
‘Really happy with the results of the work we’ve done with Bigfork on boxsite.co.uk. They’ve taken our initial concepts and brief and put together an elegant and future-proof e-commerce site that’s easier for our customers to use, and for us to maintain using the Silverstripe CMS..’
Who have we built Silverstripe websites for?
Silverstripe website - design and development services
If you’d like to know more about Silverstripe CMS, want to discuss a new Silverstripe web design, or need help with a Silverstripe website, we can help.
Call us on 01603 513080 or email hello@bigfork.co.uk.
