Why you should build a website on Silverstripe

Choosing a platform to build your website is not an easy task. There are many to choose from and they all offer similar things. I have put together a few reasons why I think Silverstripe is the best platform to build websites.

You want a website that reflects your brand's personality, values and points of difference. You want something as unique as your business. And that’s exactly what you get when you choose Silverstripe CMS as your web platform.

What is Silverstripe?

Released in New Zealand in 2006, Silverstripe is a free, open-source web framework and CMS and powers over 50,000 sites worldwide. Silverstripe powers the websites of many well-known brands and organisations, like the Ian Potter Foundation, Gordon Ramsay, Industry Super, Juicy Rentals, Wesley Mission, Landcom,  Westpac NZ and over 60 NZ Government Agencies.

Over 440 freelancers and agencies worldwide use Silverstripe CMS for their site development. This gives you the freedom to get support from different people, without vendor lock-in.

The Silverstripe community has released over 3000 modules. They extend the functionality of the CMS with blogs, e-commerce, editable forms, site search, multi-language support and more.

Easy to use

Silverstripe’s rich set of tools and features create a cost-effective way to maintain your online business and always keep it up to date, saving you money from the get-go and in the long run.

Silverstripe is easy to use with a clean and uncluttered admin interface. It makes managing your content a breeze, giving you total control over your website.

Silverstripe admin interface

Flexibility

Because Silverstripe was built as a flexible web platform from the start, there are no constraints as to what you can build. Whether you need a brochure website, an e-commerce site, a blog, a directory site or a complex web application, there is nothing that Silverstripe can't do.

Another advantage is that the front-end is completely separate from the CMS. You can design your site the way you want without constraints by a platform, whether you want a server-rendered site or use React, Angular or any other Javascript library.

And with the ability to integrate various forms of media like images, audio and video into your pages, Silverstripe gives flexibility to website authors to build pages the way they want.

Integrations

Because of Silverstripe's flexibility, it is easy to integrate your site with third-party services and tools. Your Silverstripe partner can integrate your website with social media sites, CRM and marketing platforms, payment gateways and more. The sky is the limit!

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helps your website to rank in Google and other search engines. A website needs to be built in a way that Google can easily access and read your content.

The Silverstripe core software offers great SEO capabilities out of the box. On top of that, additional modules can enhance that functionality even further to cover all aspects of SEO.

Security

Your and your customers' data must be safe. Silverstripe is built to safeguard your data whether it be from malicious activity or inadvertent loss. Silverstripe provides a solid foundation for third-party integrations and modules to help to keep your data safe.

SilverStripe has a huge security advantage over for example WordPress because of the latter’s popularity. It may not be 100 per cent secure from malicious threats, but it’s less of a target for hackers compared to WordPress.

Speed

Website speed has a huge impact on usability. In 2009 Amazon found that every 100ms of latency results in 1% fewer sales. And Akamai found in 2019 that a 100-millisecond delay hurts conversion rates by 7%.

And with Google pushing the Core Web Vitals into their search ranking, website speed has never been more important.

Silverstripe gives you all the tools you need to build a lightning-fast website.

Conclusion

Silverstripe is our tool of choice for all our website builds. It lets us create unique and customised solutions that cater for our clients' needs. In our professional opinion, Silverstripe is the most flexible and user-friendly CMS that exists.

To learn more about why we use Silverstripe get in touch!