At OSDC2013 I heard about a new open source CMS framework, created here in New Zealand, called SilverStripe.

I’ve had a chance to check it out and it looks like a nice little number. It installed easily on my Debian VM and I was up and running with a demo site in a few minutes. The tutorials lead you through some of the basic features available without diving into too much PHP, and it looks great.

It uses a basic templating language, which should be easy for anyone who understands HTML and has any one of the multitude of other templating languages out there.

All in all very nice for rapid deployment of a basic site. It remains to be seen how nice it is when you really need to get into the guts to do things “outside the ordinary” but if the polish on display so far is any indication I’m prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

If you’re looking for a PHP/MySQL based CMS that’s simple and easy to use, take a look at SilverStripe.

Luke.