SilverStripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes, and Widgets: Beginner’s Guide

06/15/2011 · No Responses

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, databases, frameworks, CMS, and many other fast-evolving technologies make up modern web-development. How can you effectively create stunning results without being limited by the ease of your tools? That’s where SilverStripe CMS comes into play.

SilverStripe, with its simple and intuitive design, is easy to work with and offers numerous customization opportunities. But understanding the options available and getting hands-on with the development techniques is not a piece of cake and certainly not a delightful experience if you’re relying on tutorials and documentation available online.

Silverstripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes, and Widgets: Beginner’s Guide takes you through designing catchy and flexible templates, adding powerful features effortlessly, integrating everything into an intuitive backend for easy administration in a simple way, and implementing nifty features with minimal effort. From the most basic to complex forms, from simple to sophisticated pages, you’ll learn how to get the most out of your SilverStripe application. SilverStripe keeps everything nice and simple, but if you need to, you can extend and customize every part of it. Graphic examples illustrate the general principle of operation, gradually introducing the finer details needed to get professional results. Common requirements such as image galleries, site search, and more can be reused or extended to fulfill your needs.

The author’s experience in designing and developing SilverStripe projects enables him to share insights on creating professional web applications in a clear and friendly way.

You will start off with creating your own templates – covering the general layout, while also taking search engine optimization into consideration. Next, you will look at the logic driving your web application, and the database. Using these basic concepts, you will start building more advanced features. These include the integration of Google Maps, Twitter and Facebook, image galleries, the handling of user-supplied information, your own full-text search, and more. Finally, you’ll even translate and internationalize your project. All of this can be easily achieved with SilverStripe.

All of this and quite a bit more is covered by Silverstripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes and Widgets: Beginner’s Guide. Besides general principles, the focus is on reusable code – getting your project started in no time.

A practical guide for extending SilverStripe applications with ease, describing real-life examples right from the start

What you will learn from this book :

Convert general HTML and CSS files into SilverStripe templates to create magnificent themes
Create and extend different page types, both in terms of look and functionality
Enable your content editor to efficiently interact with your system, for instance, adding new images to the image gallery
Store user input in the database or send it via e-mail
Translate your page and internationalize it – think about the various date formats, for instance
Implement common tasks, including search functionality, integration of Google Maps or Facebook, and much more
Set up a toolset for common tasks (search functionality, Google Maps, and Facebook)
Develop powerful server-side scripts while catering for security and performance

Approach
Designed as a Beginner’s Guide, this book takes basic ideas step-by-step to a higher level, and builds fully featured applications. Besides the raw programming, you will also be confronted with different approaches, showing you which solution is “right”. The example project built throughout this book is also used for a live project, based on the needs of a real business. You will start with an idea for a project. From the initial design, via the basic implementation, to the final polishing – every single step is highlighted.

Who this book is written for
If you are a SilverStripe developer and want to learn the nooks and crannies of developing fully-featured SilverStripe web applications with module extensions, themes, and widgets, then this book is for you. Building upon your knowledge of PHP, HTML, and CSS, this book will take you to the next level of SilverStripe development. The book assumes you have basic experience with SilverStripe.