SilverStripe

SilverStripe is a great CMS, and now that we have our new product marketing manager Kerstin on board, we've taken some time to rethink the best ways to describe just what makes it so great. We're in a bit of an unusual position being a private ... [More] company curating an open source product which is owned by its community in terms of use and code contributions. Our decisions need to take into consideration not just the commercial interests of SilverStripe Ltd, but also what's best for the software's growth. Part of our rethinking is to do with today's release of SilverStripe 3.0 preview 1. This version sees a total separation of the SilverStripe CMS from the Sapphire framework, which means we're unleashing the full power of the framework which can be used for more than just websites. For example, we used it to build Dawn. Since Sapphire can be used separately to the CMS, it gets its own logo, but much more than that, we want to demonstrate all the benefits if offers as a foundation framework. This also gives us a chance to examine what it is about SilverStripe that makes it different from any other CMS. Yes, it's open source, and yes it has a great community behind it. Those are great selling points for anyone looking to adopt a new CMS, but it doesn’t make SilverStripe strictly unique. So we looked under the hood of the code, where some marketers fear to tread. It was so nice and tidy in there! And that's what makes SilverStripe so great. The code is beautiful. Developers have total control, without worrying that content authors or designers are going to trip over something and accidentally bring the site down. You don't have to choose between elegant architecture and user-friendliness - with SilverStripe you get both. Our code is intended to let you build whatever you want. That could be websites, mobile sites, web applications, programmes - whatever. Sapphire and SilverStripe provide the basic blocks. You assemble them to suit your needs. We're pushing that idea at the CMS Expo in Chicago by using the concept of building for our marketing paraphernalia. We've got USB flash drives in the shape of a popular building brick to give away to those who come to talk to us in our booth, we're having a prize draw for a Lego Robot at the end of the conference, and as trophies for our SilverStripe awards, we'll be giving out Lego models of the Willis Tower (still known as the Sears Tower), in a nice reference to where the expo is held. We would have preferred a New Zealand landmark, of course, but unfortunately the Lego architecture series hasn't come down under yet! Just like it's fun to see the amazing creations people build with Lego, it's also a thrill for us to check out what's new in the SilverStripe community showcase, and to see how enthusiastically people speak about SilverStripe. We might not have a SilverStripe Land, but with SilverStripe 3, who knows what’s possible? The building blocks are there, now we - and the community - just have to build it!*   * SilverStripe 3 will definitely not contain a physical amusement park. SilverStripe 4.0, however... [Less]

Changes are afoot with the resignation of Brian Calhoun. Brian and the Board have been discussing SilverStripe's future, and in the course of those discussions decided that now was a good time for Brian and SilverStripe to pursue different ... [More] directions. Brian goes with the Board's thanks and best wishes. Our former CTO, Sam Minnée, has been nominated by the board as Acting CEO to replace Brian. Sam was one of the three original founders of SilverStripe, so we know the company is in good hands. We have a huge year ahead of us with the launch of SilverStripe v3.0, and numerous other projects both small and large. We are very much looking to the future. Sam says: "I am honoured to have been given this opportunity and look forward to building on the foundation created under Brian’s leadership. I am particularly excited to see through the launch of SilverStripe 3."   [Less]

We're all a hustle and bustle in the office right now, because at the same time that some of us will be in Chicago at the CMS Expo, others will be attending the ALGIM 2011 Web Symposium on May 2 and 3. The 2011 Annual ALGIM Web Symposium is now into ... [More] its sixth year, attracting a variety of speakers and case studies from across the public and private sector. It's the premier event for website, online services and communication teams in the public sector (local and central government). We've done a lot of local government work, including sites for Nelson City Council, Gisborne District Council, Taranaki Regional Council, the Metlink site for the Greater Wellington Regional Council, as well as the local elections site. We're looking forward to seeing lots of our clients again at the event. We're especially excited that the Tasman District site we worked on is nominated for three of the ALGIM Web Awards; Best Redevelopment of New Website Best New Feature Website (under 50,000 Population): SilverStripe / SilentOne Integration Best New Feature Website (under 50,000 Population): Google Maps Integration At SilverStripe, we're all about making websites that not only incorporate new technologies but are actually also useful as well. As part of this, our Senior Project Manager Julian Meadow will be doing a presentation on usability testing on a budget. This presentation will explain how to run your own usability test sessions, within a limited budget and timeframe. The lessons taught during this session can be used to identify areas to improve an existing council website, not just test the effectiveness of website wireframes and prototypes. If you’re going to be coming to ALGIM, make sure you stop by our booth to say hi. There's lots for us to tell you about, including the brand new SilverStripe v3.0. We'd be very interested to talk about the ways our open source software can help you reach your audiences cost-effectively and easily, and answer any questions you might have. See you there! [Less]

In May, SilverStripe is going to the 2011 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference in Chicago. Hosted by the CMS Association, the 2011 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference will feature over eighty information-packed CMS training ... [More] sessions. Created for Web Designers, Developers and Business people, CMS Expo is the place to be for the most relevant, timely and actionable information in the fast-growth CMS Sector. Attendees will learn the latest web skills, while making highly valuable business connections, all under one roof. Over eighty of the world’s top CMS instructors will share their knowledge and insights over these three energizing days. CMS Expo is geared toward all levels of expertise. SilverStripe will be there to provide an update on SilverStripe CMS 3.0 plans. As well as having an expo booth, we'll be offering four training sessions, participating in interactive panels, organising a meetup, and giving out awards for websites built on SilverStripe. We're really excited to be attending, and look forward to meeting many of you there. More details will follow, but for now the vital information you need is that CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference takes place on May 2-4, at the Hotel Orrington in Evaston, Illinois. Registration is now open. [Less]

Like everyone else, here at SilverStripe we are very worried about the devastation in Christchurch right now. There are a number of ways that people can help with the recovery, via donation of money through various channels. In addition to that, we ... [More] would also like to offer our support to any Christchurch SilverStripe developers in any way we can assist. Please get in contact with us to see how we can help you. Lee Middleton+64 4 978 [email protected]: leemiddleton [Less]

Deloitte's 2010 Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 list has been released, and SilverStripe is ranked 261 out of all the technology companies. The Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific awards program is a ranking of the Asia Pacific region's 500 ... [More] fastest-growing technology companies, based on percentage revenue growth over three years. Our revenue growth has been 151%. This is the third year in a row that we've placed in the top 500. We'd like to thank all our clients and staff for helping us achieve this point. For more information about the Deloitte Fast 500, please visit their site.   [Less]

If your website runs across multiple servers or uses PostgreSQL as its database, Dawn™ can now support your environment! This week we’re excited to release a major update to Dawn. Previously Dawn could only monitor a website if it ran on a single ... [More] server. You can now use Dawn to monitor websites spread across multiple servers. Likewise, previously Dawn could only monitor websites running on the MySQL database; we have now extended Dawn to support PostgreSQL. In addition to database and multiple server support, we've also improved Dawn alerts and reporting as detailed below. We're pleased that a wider pool of people using SilverStripe CMS to run critical websites can now enjoy the ease and power of monitoring their websites with Dawn. Multiple web-server support Dawn now supports website architectures comprising multiple web-servers, each running PHP and serving pages via SilverStripe CMS. Under this scenario, each server has the Dawn Agent and Logger installed, and the dashboard will show each server as a separate set of concentric rings in the dashboard. For complex websites, you may want to set up your database on a dedicated machine, separate from your web server. This dedicated machine wasn’t previously able to be monitored with Dawn, as it used to require that the webserver and the database were on the same machine. Now you can split these two functions and use Dawn to make sure everything's working as expected. PostgreSQL Dawn can now monitor websites powered by a PostgreSQL database, not just MySQL. PostgreSQL is often chosen over MySQL for websites that deal with huge sets of information, or have geospatial data, or deal with transactions (e.g. online stores). Dawn becomes useful to more sophisticated sites than it used to, now that Dawn supports PostgreSQL databases. Alerts when your site comes back online Obviously, Dawn will send you alerts when your site goes down. Now, it will also send you an alert when your site comes back online, letting you know exactly when your visitors can reach your site again. Disk space usage Now Dawn can monitor the amount of disk space that is used on your server. As alerts are fully customisable, you can choose to be warned if you’re running out of room. As well as these features, we've also done some tinkering behind the scenes to make it all run a little faster. For more information about Dawn, read our other blog posts, have a play with the demo, or give our 30 day trial a go! [Less]

We're super excited about the upcoming Ignite Wellington #3, not just because we're sponsoring and we love any chance to meet others in the Wellington creative community, but also because we just purely love the event. Here's the pitch: Have you ever ... [More] been to a 60 minute talk and lamented that there was only five minutes of content? Imagine if you could hear only that five minutes... that's Ignite! What’s so special about Ignite beyond the concept itself? Well, take a look at this picture. How exactly does one build something out of marshmallows and spaghetti? Very very carefully, it turns out. What you're looking at in that image is the challenge that took place at the first Ignite. Attendees tried to build the tallest possible tower in a set period of time from the materials they were given, and there were some really interesting results generated. The challenge for the second Ignite event was to throw a piece of paper the furthest through a hoop. Some teams went for a simple paper plane shape, others went for a ball approach, and one team even designed an elaborate biplane, taking out the prize for creativity. That's what we like about Ignite. You don't know what challenge you're going to be asked to complete, and while presenters and their topics are always listed in advance, you don't know quite what to expect from them either. You might be enthralled by what someone learnt while biking across America, find out what would inspire someone to cover trees with bits of knitting, or you might even end up buying some lunar real estate. So how does that relate back to SilverStripe? Well, we like to make sure that we poke our heads up out of the code every once in a while to look for new inspiration, and to keep our minds fresh. Sometimes that takes the form of office challenges, but other times, it just involves sitting back, letting someone else do the talking, and seeing where that takes our brains. I really don't want to use the phrase "thinking outside the box," but clearly I need some Ignite inspiration right now to come up with a better way to to express how useful it is to see other ways people deal with obstacles that pop up! Sounds like fun, yeah? So we'll see you at the Paramount on February 8 if you're in Wellington. Otherwise, keep your eye on Ignites around the world. All images courtesy of Ignite [Less]

Instead of writing a year-end summary of our awesome 2010, I thought I'd take a different tack and write about some things we don't do. It's often easy to say typical things around what we do, but that can get boring, or at least not all that ... [More] interesting. A lot of what we are can be defined by what we're not. So here are seven things we don't do: 1. Waste time Hold your left hand out in front of you, like you're about to shake someone's hand (and that person's left-handed). Now hold your right hand out in front of you in the corresponding manner. Make sure your hands are as far apart as your body is wide. Your left hand is when you were born. Your right hand is when you die. What you do in the middle in between is up to you. But we bet you don't want to waste time. 2. Stay stuck We all get stuck from time to time while trying to achieve something. If everything was easy, we probably wouldn't get paid for any of it. We try really hard to recognise when we get stuck, and then let each other (or the client) know when we're stuck so that we can all move on and be productive. 3. Fail slow Related to #2 above is the notion of failing slow. We've all seen this. You're on a project and everyone has a general feeling of dread about an upcoming deadline. As in, "We're not going to make it and I need to cover my ass so I better start blaming others now." Almost like a death march. Not fun. And also not honest. The best thing to do, and we try very hard to do this as much as possible, is to acknowledge failure early and figure out internally or with the client what we're going to do about it. Failing fast is good. 4. Revere money We need to pay salaries and we need a modest profit to grow the business. That's what money means to us. That attitude allows us to do what's right. For us it means spending time working on our open source product, sponsoring worthwhile events, donating to charities, and throwing the occasional kick-ass party for our staff. We have found that when you remove money as a primary motivator, opportunities open up to you. 5. Chain people Our sick-day policy is "If you're sick, stay home." Why should someone who's only used, say, two of her allotted six days feel cheated? Like she should have been sick more so she could have more time away from work? That doesn't make sense. Trust people and they'll return the favour. 6. Take on any work We only take on work that we like. The definition of "like" changes over time, too. For example, lately we've been doing awesome work for some bigger clients. That brings new challenges, but it stretches us in good ways. We like that. We also like to innovate. It's rare these days that we take on work that doesn't have some kind of innovative component to it. Related to #5 above, if people feel like they're grinding away, doing boring work all the time, then that's not very fun and makes for a boring place to work. 7. Give people what they ask for Internally and with clients we try to understand why someone is asking for something. Often times, people aren't sure why they want something. When you take the time to get to a root cause of why someone wants something you can identify what they're really after and then deliver that. Everyone wants to have their needs met but we're all quite poor at vocalising what we really want. At SilverStripe we take time to dig a little deeper, and invariably it makes for a better outcome for all. So that's seven things we don't do. Hopefully next year we'll have more things we don't do. Happy holidays everyone, and we'll see you in 2011! [Less]

A couple of weeks ago, it was surprisingly quiet in the office as Sigurd Magnusson and Lee Middleton were in Wairakei representing SilverStripe Ltd at the Association of Local Government Information Management conference. Once they got back, I ... [More] thought it would be a good idea to get a debriefing from Sig as to what went on. 1. What is ALGIM? Who goes to it? ALGIM is a 30 year old organisation that serves the ICT sector within New Zealand's city, district, and regional councils. ALGIM do a lot of things, but they are well known for their main conference held annually in Wairakei, near Taupo. The event runs for several days and is attended by a couple of hundred people. You'll find two groups of people at this conference: 1. CIOs, IT managers, and other IT staff who work within our country's councils. 2. Folk from a wide variety of web, software, hardware companies, and consultants who work with local government. 2. Why were we there? Do we have a lot of local government clients? Councils are really now beginning to shift away from their first generation of websites, which were large, unwieldy, and brochure-like, and which often contained a few small online services - for instance you could check your rates or property boundaries. Councils are now increasingly looking to replicate on the website all of the services you can get when you ring or visit a council, and really lift the usefulness of their websites to the public. Our company and our CMS began life focussed on good-looking, easy to use, interactive websites, so we're good at helping councils make this transition; in just two years working with councils we've become the second most popular platform to run council sites. 3. How did you spend your time at the conference? My colleague Lee Middleton and I held a expo stand along with about 40 other companies. This gave us a good home to which our existing clients could come visit us to chat, and provided us with an opportunity to talk with others about their plans, challenges, and questions. The conference has a busy line-up of speakers, and this gave us good insight into the issues and opportunities in the sector, so we made sure we attended a number of those sessions. The conference is held out in the countryside, meaning everyone is held together from breakfast to after dinner - this means long days filled with lots of interesting conversations. 4. What issues do you see facing local government web people? Individual councils currently struggle to gather the time, skill, and money to build awesome websites that serve the public really well. Four million people divided by 80 councils means each has relatively few resources - and this is true even for Auckland because they have such a large and diverse population to manage. The issue is that while councils all work under the same legislation and have the same responsibilities, they approach their work differently. This prevents them from easily sharing investments. We've begun helping our council customers by stating ideas and code we do for them can be shared and reused openly, however this is hampered by the fact councils work in subtly different ways, meaning there is still a cost to customise the work. 5. What was the highlight of the conference for you? The video presentation of the history of ALGIM. In the early 1970s, the very first mainframes and programmable calculators were being brought into New Zealand councils. ALGIM's roots were in a user group of the first few councils to use computers, and by 1980 the user group had grown up and become a legal entity. It was great to see how far we've come since then, and yet, consider how much more computers (and the web, in particular) still have the potential to make councils work more effectively. For example, there's heaps more that can be done to allow rate payers to have more say and visibility into the governance of where they live. We'll see you next year at ALGIM of course, but if you're interested in finding out more about our work with local governments, just get in contact with us. [Less]