The Rich Bank of Modules & Themes of SilverStripe!

The open-source community flourishes in the presence of the rich bank of modules and Silverstripe themes is surely going to mark milestones with the kind of modules it has. Though a small and less popular community, the kind of modules it has come with is quite impressive but seldom noticed. Being a responsible and committed member of the SilverStripe community, team AddWeb has actively been a part of its community and hence have also studied several predefined modules of Silverstripe. Let us bring these awesome modules into the notice with this particular blog post. Maybe, that’s the least we as a member of the community can do for the growth of SilverStripe community.

Say, you had to add something to your project viz. ‘Add user-defined form’, ‘Add comment section’ or want to build a Blog website. In such a case the predefined modules by Silverstripe will come to your help. Check them out and follow the following steps to install them!

          Step 1: Run the command to install module.

          Composer require authorname/modulename
 

          Step 2: Need to flush the site by appending ?flush=all.

         URL, e.g. flush

There are a bunch of modules available on the SilverStripe community. Explore them in here:

There are a couple of ‘Distributions’ available in the SilverStripe community, which helps you to build a website faster. These distributions are mentioned below:

1. silverstripe/recipe-cms

This distribution plugin provides you with a readymade and fully featured page, along with an asset content editing for a recipe website.

To use it in your SilverStripe Project, all you need to do is to run the below-mentioned command:

        composer require silverstripe/recipe-cms

2. SilverStripe CMS Branding

This one is a nice little UI change for the cms sidebar. The theme supports the UploadField in displaying the logo on the left-hand side of the many in CMS. It goes this way - Settings > Settings Tab > CMS Tab.

Where to get it from?

composer require ryanpotter/silverstripe-cms-theme

What is it all about?

  It's a CMS theme, the screenshot of which is shared as below:

3. axllent/silverstripe-cms-tweaks:

     This is a module used to add a series of tweaks/modifications to the SilverStripe CMS. The prime goal of this very module is to make this CMS easy and clear for the non-technical users, which is done by removing a few functionalities that are confusing for them.

Where to get it from?

composer require axllent/silverstripe-cms-tweaks

What is it all about?

It's Several CMS usability improvements.

Modification Made:

• Move Meta Description and ExtraMeta to its own ‘Advanced tab’.

• ‘Meta Title’ is now named as ‘Page name’, in order to avoid confusion.

• Hide CMS ErrorPages to non-admin users in CMS.

• Link logo in CMS to website homepage rather than silverstripe.org

Now, let’s move on to various other modules of Silverstripe, viz. build Blog website, build user-defined form like contact us page, Add comment section, Add theme, et al. Let’s learn about installing these various SilverStripe modules and their usages:

• How to make ‘Blog Website’ in SilverStripe:

Step 1: Run the command

          composer require silverstripe/blog

Step 2: Now you can create page and there is type of blog page.

• Create a new blog post :

• Add the content of blog post :

• How to build User defined form in SilverStripe:

  • UserForms enables CMS users to create dynamic forms via a drag and drop interface and without getting involved in any PHP code.
     

Step: 1  Install Package

Composer require silverstripe/userforms
 

Step: 2 Run Command

php vendor/silverstripe/framework/cli-script.php dev/build
 

Step 3: Need to flush the site by appending ?flush=all    

              URL, e.g. flush

Step 4: Now go to CMS menu

  Create a New page and there will be the option of creating the user-defined form:

• Now Add Fields in the form :

• You can create a form as below:

• You can see filled data of form:

In page/submissions

• Commenting functionality for Pages and other DataObjects on your SilverStripe site.

Step: 1  Install Package

composer require SilverStripe/comments
 

Step: 2  Need to flush the site by appending ?flush=all    

              URL, e.g. flush

Step : 3 Now check in pages there one section appended of comments.

• If you don't want comment section in any page then there will setting to remove comment section:

In page > settings tab > Uncheck Allow comment

• How to Add theme in SilversSripe:

Step: 1 Install package for a theme.

composer require silverstripe-themes/blackcandy
 

Step: 2 Now set theme

For version 4 set theme as :

In app/_config/theme.yml file,

SilverStripe\View\SSViewer:
 themes:
   - theme_name
   - '$default'

For version 3 and less set theme as :

There is an option for setting the theme in the settings menu

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