SilverStripe 3.0 Alpha 2 Announced

Silverstripe.org have just released a new 'pre release' of the upcoming version

The last step before beta; SilverStripe CMS 3.0 alpha 2 is ready to download and test.
We have come a long way and we are half way there!

I've just downloaded and installed a copy of this version, and just wanted to share my inital findings. Most of the talk about version 3.0 is all about effieciency, new ORM, better ways of calling data from the database and other tech speak. Personaly, I have little interest in this kind of stuff -  the whole reason I use silvestripe CMS is so that I don't have to worry about these details - I know the guys at silverstripe HQ are doing a great job, and instead can spend my time designing and builing websites that look good, and the client can manage without asking me questions all the time.

For me, the two most important questions are 

  1. Is SilverStripe 3 easy and effiecent for me to build a website
  2. Is SilverStripe 3 easy for my clients to use

Coding Changes:

Due to the fact this release is not fully working (it's going to be a few months yet before the official launch) it's quite hard to answer the first question. I already find SS 2 pretty efficient to use (which is why I use it!) and 3 should be a bit better. A few things have changed though, which mean a lot of the plugins won't work, and will need updating. We'll have to get used to using the 'gridfield' instead of the 'dataobjectmanager' plugin to manage dataobjects. So there are a few things to relearn - and as yet very little help out there - but don't worry - I'll be adding tutorials here as soon as I can.

The CMS:

However, the biggest difference in my view is the newly rewamped CMS. The new design is quite different - and my first impressions are that it looks modern, smooth, and pretty logical. The menu is now down the left side, and can be collapsed neatly - providing more space for editting pages.

The other nice new feature is the preview page button shows your webpage withing the CMS. You can navigate your site, get to the page you want to edit, click 'edit' - and logically enough, you can edit this page. I can this being easier than searching through the site tree for pages - especially on complicated sites with lots of pages.

Creating new pages is also improved. I used to have lots of issues explaining to clients why their newly created page had ended up as a sub page of some other page. Now, 'New Page' opens a popup where you choose your page type (which usefully shows descriptions too), and you choose where you want the page to go before creating it.

The Verdict:

All in all, it's looking good. Plenty of improvements to be seen already - however, as they say 'we are half way there'.