Take a look at this graph for instance:

As you can see, certain systems perform better than others and what I found especially interesting is that contrary to what you might hear on the ‘net, Joomla actually shows quite well from a security standpoint.

As part of the interpretation of this analysis, the author came to this conclusion:

• WordPress only had a single serious vulnerability (in case I interpreted that correctly) — impressive.
• Drupal did also well, only the percentage is a little higher due to the low number of overall issues.
• In contrast to the first two, TYPO3 appeared to not do well at all. It has by far most serious vulnerabilities both in absolute numbers and the percentage. However, I would attribute part of the difference compared to the other projects to TYPO3′s stricter rating of vulnerabilities. One should probably add a CVSS comparison to Drupal to get a more balanced result.
• Joomla, while having the most vulnerabilities overall, did very well with serious ones (meaning it had few of those).
• SilverStripe seems to be floating somewhere between the other projects, neither being exceptionally good or bad.

Check out this screenshot of the new interface in development:

SilverStripe 3.0 Alpha 1 - Editing a Page

The most notable change from previous versions is the separation of the Framework from the CMS, which is now a standalone tool. The release boasts an entirely revamped user-interface, making it more intuitive and visually appealing for the user, with the addition of a customisable UI based on themes. The ‘preview’ function has seen a major improvement, enabling users to switch between the CMS and previewed content much more easily than previous versions, which SilverStripe believes will greatly speed up the work of CMS authors.

As with any major version release, expectations are set high on new “under the hood” features and upgrades. Developers can expect a rewritten ORM and template engine, and a move to using jQuery for CMS user interface. SilverStripe has also built GridField, a replacement for ComplexTableField based on the new ORM.

Alpha also sees a new deprecation API, which will be used to build more sophisticated upgrading tools prior to the stable release.

The road to 3.0 stable will involve improving and polishing the core UI, the addition of a YAML-based configuration system, Dependency Injection, further performance improvements, in particular speed, introducing jQuery to form validation, and further enhancements to ORM and GridField.

More info can be found on the SilverStripe blog

CMS 3.0 promises an improved user interface, a better technical platform and will embrace social media and mobile web applications

Product Marketing Manager Kerstin Schuman says that SilverStripe Ltd. is proud to give the framework a status of it’s own; it is a great tool to build anything a developer wants. The framework will now become a standalone member of the SilverStripe Suite, becoming downloadable as a separate development tool. The SilverStripe Suite comprises of the SilverStripe CMS, SilverStripe Framework, SilverStripe Site Monitor and supported SilverStripe modules.

Schuman says the release of the framework gives SilverStripe the opportunity to reach a new group of people who need more than just a CMS in order to build creative new web applications.

These changes mean that the SilverStripe site performance measuring tool, previously known as Dawn, will be renamed to SilverStripe Site Monitor.

This demonstration video uses a sample ‘bare-bones’ website design to illustrate all of the features available from the standard package.

There is also quite a bit of work underway to redesign the user interface as well. Here is an example of some of the work being done so far:

Check out the latest version by grabbing a copy from here: http://silverstripe.org/pre-releases

Fixes in 2.4.5

• Fixed issue in CMS where rolling back to an earlier revision of a page would produce an error (fixed in 2.3.11 as well).
• Fixed issue where posting a page comment could post to the wrong page.
• Fixed issue where documents and images with uppercase extensions were not accessible.
• Fixed issue with “RandomGenerator” causing an error with some restrictive shared hosting environments.

Find out more in the changelogs for 2.4.5.

2.3.11, which is an older version that is still maintained has also seen an update for those customers who still run it. The primary change in this version was:

• Fixed issue in CMS where rolling back to an earlier revision of a page would produce an error.

Website: http://www.silverstripe.org

• Draft pages were visible to unauthenticated users on specifically crafted URLs.
• An content author with access to the “Security” section in the CMS could potentially take over an administrator account.

These are now fixed in 2.4.2, along with several dozen minor bug fixes.You can review a list of the 100+ changes in the changelog.

Improved Windows Support

SilverStripe 2.4.2 offers increased confidence over past versions for running our software on Windows OS when using SQL Server as the database. Previously, you had to run SilverStripe on Linux for all unit tests to pass. As a result of fixing bugs and unit tests, all SilverStripe unit tests now pass when running on Windows. The work includes fixing full-text search for the SQL Server database module, fixing windows file path issues along with numerous other bug fixes for the Windows platform done in 2.4.0 and 2.4.1.

Other minor improvements

1. Allows Apache to provide better error pages
2. Improved unit testing reports
3. Fixed the installer logic for SQLite database

More info: http://www.silverstripe.org

Most websites now have a noticeable amount of visitors using mobile devices. We’ve been looking at how to make it easier to build websites that can be accessed through popular mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Google Android phones.

The result is the SilverStripe Mobile Module. Once installed, it provides out of the box functionality to render an SilverStripe CMS website using a mobile-optimised theme, with the page width, font size, and menu layout designed for a small screen.

While you can certainly use this out of the box theme, it’s mainly supplied so that someone familiar with HTML and CSS can customise the theme to suit your intended look and feel.

The module also provides:

• Automatic detection of mobile devices so that you can automatically redirect people to a mobile-optimised website.
• A simple GUI for configuring the module

You can test-drive the module by visiting http://m.demo.silverstripe.com in your mobile phone.

SilverStripe’s templating language has meant developing mobile templates has always been possible. However, there is considerable effort in achieving cross-browser compatibility across mobile devices. The goal for this module is to reduce the time it takes people to build websites optimised for browsing by mobile devices. It’s not intended to grow into a module that allows people on mobile phones to perform content authoring (although we do see that this could be useful for certain CMS tasks, like approving a request from a colleague to publish website content.)

At this stage, the mobile module is in beta. This means they are inviting people to download, test, and offer feedback on the module. Once they’ve incorporated your feedback, they hope to release the module confidently knowing that it provides website developers with a stable and useful tool for quickly creating mobile-optimised websites.

Download the SilverStripe Mobile module

Hierarchical URLs

If your website contains a large number of pages, you may find SilverStripe’s default way of handling URLs a little limiting. Until now, URLs could only be one level deep, for example:

http://website.com/new-york-staff-john-smith

With hierarchical URLs, the address for such a page might be:

http://website.com/offices/new-york/staff/john-smith

One of the principles of this feature is that it provides a logical “bread crumb” for a page. Each URL segment (as separated by a slash) is a page in itself that can be visited. Hierarchical URLs also reduce the problem of “running out” of URLs, where you might be forced to have URLs like http://website.com/staff-2.

SilverStripe 2.4 allows you to run the website in either simple or hierarchical URL mode.

Huge thanks go to Andrew Short, a member of our developer community based in Australia, who is responsible for writing most of this feature.

Microsoft SQL Server database support

We have seen strong demand for SilverStripe to run on the Microsoft platform—in recent months there have been tens of thousands of downloads via the Microsoft.com web application gallery alone. We have therefore worked hard to allow SilverStripe to natively run on a SQL Server 2008 database, eliminating the requirement to run SilverStripe on MySQL (though, of course, it still runs great on MySQL). We’re really happy with the results, and we have government websites like www.gw.govt.nz already running on this platform.

Running SilverStripe on SQL Server requires the installation of the SilverStripe SQL Server module.

PostgreSQL database support

SilverStripe 2.4 can also run on a PostgreSQL 8.3 or later database. We are continuosly testing this feature; however, our testing has not been as extensive as it has been for Microsoft SQL Server. We’d love for you to install SilverStripe 2.4 with the PostgreSQL Database Support module and let us know how it goes.

Performance and memory use optimisations

Memory use optimisations mean that the CMS backend interface for the “Site Content” section easily scales to well over 10,000 pages. Changes include:

• Performance improvements around Object and ViewableData property access.
• Improved unit test execution speed.
• Decreased memory usage in “Files & Images” section.
• Ability to cache parts of templates, providing a middle ground between the speed of fully cached pages and the richness of fully dynamic database-driven pages.
• Batch action handling handles larger tree structures, provides better visual feedback, and respects permissions on individual pages.
• Tests that SilverStripe is compatible with Microsoft’s new WinCache PHP bytecode cache. Anecdotal tests show that WinCache provides a 50% speed improvement in generating SilverStripe webpages.

Introducing roles

SilverStripe has long had support for setting granular security permissions on pages. Users can be a member of one or more groups, and groups can be configured to have various system rights. We also allow various view and edit permissions on a page-by-page basis. This provides a great deal of flexibility, but in complex organisations the task of setting up the permission structures can mean spending a lot of time creating security groups.

With SilverStripe 2.4 we’ve made it easier to manage more complex security configurations with the introduction of roles. Roles allows you to create groupings of people who

• Have the same system rights (e.g., access to create pages but not create users.)
• Have those rights for different sections of a website (e.g., news section, product catalogue, corporate profile, etc.)

Roles are optional.

Other security features

• A group can be limited to only edit a certain language in the CMS.
• Team members can get permissions to see the draft version of a page in preview mode without requiring CMS access.
• Pages of type “Virtual Page” have improved stability in regards to their permission control, translation, and publication.
• More fine-grained permission control for translators.
• Better XSS security of the autologin token by using HTTPOnly cookies.
• More secure against brute force login attempts.

Other key improvements

• Our new SiteConfig feature allows you to store site-wide settings including permissions and languages used on your site.
• The CMS now searches for broken internal links to other pages and broken file references, and highlights them in the WYSIWYG editor. A report can be used to show broken links across the website.
• Improved API to allow custom tags to be parsed within CMS content before being presented on webpages.
• Improved reporting API to unify the CMS sidebar reports and full-page reports on their own section. It’s easier to add custom filters to reports.
• Added dropdown to choose from existing anchor links when inserting a link from the CMS sidebar.
• Improved broken link detection.
• Removed the jsparty/ toplevel folder, and moved all its dependencies into sapphire/thirdparty and cms/thirdparty.
• More than 350 bugfix and enhancement commits, plus over 200 minor changes.

learn more: http://silverstripe.org/silverstripe-2-4-release-a-significant-step-forward/

From the blog post:

Today we’ve moved significantly closer to a final and stable version of SilverStripe v2.4. You can now download SilverStripe v2.4 Release Candidate 1, which fixes bugs and incorporates feedback from the community since our Beta releases.

We’d appreciate you testing this release, and seeing whether your existing sites upgrade smoothly to this version. Version 2.4 does represent a major version update, providing a number of new features needed to run larger and more complex websites. Whether you’re needing to run on SilverStripe on another database, make use of nested URLs, or keen to take advantage of improved performance or wider unit-test coverage, there’s something in this release that will help everyone who uses SilverStripe.

You can grab a copy from: http://www.silverstripe.org

For more information about SilverStripe, you can read our SilverStripe review or check out all of our SilverStripe related articles.

You can also learn more by visiting their homepage.

In their latest release, they promise the addition of the increasingly popular Mollom (the SPAM fighting company founded by Drupals’ Dries Buytaert) as well as some very nice improvements to its SEO functionality.

We’ve been meaning to do a review of this system for quite some time, but chose to wait for this release.

SilverStripe 2.3.1 Review

The Installation

Ladies and Gentleman, be prepared for the worlds longest screenshot.
Beginning the SilverStripe install, we are presented with the following ‘all-in-one’ screen:

So we made our selections and clicked on the Install SilverStripe button and off went the installer:

And ladies and gentleman, thats all their is to the installation process. Amazingly, SilverStripe has managed to create the fastest installation we have ever seen of a CMS including that of the venerable WordPress. That is, indeed, something pretty remarkable. We can recall previous releases that we’ve tested being more involved but it’s definitely nice to see that the SilverStripe team has put forth such a solid amount of effort towards making this an easy to install system.

Post Installation

There have been some other notable changes as well like the addition of the “click here to delete installation files” option, which is something we’ve been mentioning and asking for from all CMS’ for quite some time. It would appear that SilverStripe has spent a good amount of time listening to people and their suggestions. Kudos to them for this simple, yet time saving addition:

Once we chose to delete our install files, we were offered the option to enter the CMS itself and take a look at the administrative interface.Upon choosing this option, we also made note that it appears SilverStripe has worked to improve the load times required by their admin engine as it seemed faster than previous versions.

I’ve always liked the SilverStripe admin engine, I find it very appealing and well organize:

SilverStripe is different from other CMS platforms we've used in that it separates themes and widgets completely from the CMS. Meaning, installation typically involves grabbing an extension from http://silverstripe.org/extending-silverstripe/ and uploading it to your site directory and flushing the database. This may sound more complicated than it is, but believe me, it's very simple.Each page also has a tab for Metadata which allows you to instantly edit page titles, keywords, url and descriptions directly. You can even create redirector pages with the click of a button, which is another nice addition.Media management is also very simple, just upload your files from the Files and Images tab and you can change and preview details on each of them directly from there with a few simple clicks.Comments can be managed from their own screen and viewed by Approved or Spam flags with minimal effort.Creating and editing Security groups and individual users is very very simple with this system. It gives you complete control over individual permissions:

And it doesn’t stop there, you can tell they have put a lot of thought into security because they’ve even gone so far as to add  restriction of accounts based on IP address, as you can see here:

There help system is also very good with a quick click you are on their help site with a fully searchable database of instructions. The forum is well administered and active with fast replies and they have a nice, close knit community of users who don’t just use SilverStripe, but promote it and actively engage in the forums.

Overall, it’s an exceptional system worthy of the attention its been getting. SilverStripe is not just a the little CMS from New Zealand, but a strong competitor and with their continuing efforts towards improvements, it wouldn’t surprise us at all if in a few years they became a top contender in the Open Source market.

Homepage: http://silverstripe.org

Corporate Presence: http://silverstripe.com