> Building Large-Scale Projects with Silverstripe
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- Florian Thoma
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Silverstripe is often perceived as a framework best suited for smaller projects, with alternatives like Drupal or Umbraco preferred for larger-scale sites. However, in my experience, Silverstripe's flexibility, performance, and usability make it a powerful choice for enterprise-level projects. Let’s explore how to optimise Silverstripe for managing large and complex websites effectively.
Usability of the CMS
Silverstripe’s intuitive CMS is well-equipped to handle sophisticated content structures, making it a strong contender for large-scale websites. Its site tree structure, combined with the WYSIWYG editor and Elemental, allows authors to manage content seamlessly, regardless of the site’s size.
Leveraging ModelAdmin for Structured Content
Managing large websites often leads to site tree clutter, particularly when dealing with structured content like blog posts, products, or case studies, where their position in the hierarchy isn't crucial.
By utilising ModelAdmin, you can shift these page types into their own CMS section, reducing clutter and enhancing content management efficiency with filters and search tools to handle hundreds, or even thousands of items, effortlessly.
Supercharging GridField with Customisations
The GridField plays a crucial role in managing large datasets within both individual pages and ModelAdmin. Customisations such as advanced filtering, bulk actions, and inline editing significantly improve efficiency when handling extensive content libraries.
Implementing Fine-Grained Permission Roles
Silverstripe’s default setup relies on groups to assign permissions. While permission roles exist, they’re not configured by default and often underutilised.
A more scalable approach is to define permission roles with specific permissions and assign them to groups. This allows for granular user management, ensuring security, scalability, and compliance across large teams.
Boosting Performance with Caching & Optimisation
For high-traffic websites, performance is critical. Silverstripe offers various caching strategies to minimise database queries and speed up page loads:
- Partial Caching for specific sections of a page
- Static Publisher to pre-generate entire pages
- CDN for caching and fast content delivery
- Profiling tools to identify bottlenecks
For a deeper dive into Silverstripe performance optimisation, check out my previous posts:
- How to Make Your Silverstripe Website Lightning Fast
- Silverstripe: Need for Speed
- Optimising Image Loading Performance and LCP in Silverstripe
Managing Multiple Sites with a Shared Content Pool
Large organizations often operate multiple websites that benefit from shared resources, such as images, products, or other page types.
To streamline multi-site management, I recommend using fromholdio/silverstripe-configured-multisites, Luke's fork of symbiote/silverstripe-multisites, which allows admins to manage multiple sites in one CMS.
Because adding new sites usually needs a server admin to add DNS entries and other server settings anyway, our fork of the module defines the sites in config instead of the CMS and removes unnecessary clutter for CMS authors who don’t need to be able to add sites.
Establishing Custom Publishing Workflows
In enterprise environments, basic draft and publish options may not meet complex editorial needs.
The Silverstripe Advanced Workflow module enables teams to implement custom approval workflows, ensuring better editorial control. Combined with granular permission settings, it gives administrators precise control over who can perform content actions.
Use Silverstripe for Your Next Large-Scale Project!
The above optimisations transform Silverstripe into a scalable and efficient solution for large-scale websites. If you’re planning a high-performance, enterprise-grade website, feel free to reach out. Let’s discuss how to tailor Silverstripe to your requirements.