An update to our previous blog post...

We've released the second release candidate for SilverStripe v2.3.0.

This contains fixes based on further testing we've done, as well as fixes to important bugs raised by the community. A big thanks to any one who downloaded our first release candidate and performed testing and filed bugs!

We have also updated documentation for installing SilverStripe on Microsoft's most recent version of their webserver (Microsoft Server 2008 with IIS 7.) SilverStripe v2.3 now installs easily on Microsoft IIS, partly due to their new URL Rewrite module. If you have IIS 7, please try installing SilverStripe v2.3.0rc2 and let us know if you encounter any issues, ahead of our stable v2.3 release.

•  silverstripe-v2.3.0-rc2.tar.gz

SilverStripe v2.3.0 is nearly here!  The first release candidate has been announced, and we expect that a stable version of 2.3.0 will be available in the next few weeks.

We are very excited about this release; here are a few of the improvements that it provides:  

1. ModelAdmin: a mechanism for easily creating administration UIs for any data set that you can dream up.
2. Out of the box RESTful and SOAP APIs for your site's content and data.
3. An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.2 to provide much improved content editing.  For example, the editor now has a built-in spell-checker.
4. Hundreds of automated tests to help keep the product stable as we work on it.
5. Better security settings for deciding who can view and edit pages on your site.
6. Improvements to internationalisation of the CMS.

See the full changelog here

How can you help?

We need testers to download and install the release candidate, and file bug reports.  Testing your existing sites against the release candidate is the best way of ensuring that you will be able to upgrade to the new version.

• Download the release candidate here: http://www.silverstripe.com/assets/rc/silverstripe-v2.3.0-rc1.tar.gz
• Read upgrade notes here: http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=upgrading#section
• File bugs on our Trac bug-tracker here: http://open.silverstripe.com/

German readers can now pre-order SilverStripe: Das umfassende Handbuch from Amazon, due to be published February 2009.

The 450 page German book offers a complete guide to SilverStripe for web developers with an intermediate familiarity with website development, PHP5, and object oriented code.

Ingo Schommer, one of the core SilverStripe developers based in New Zealand, has spent many recent months working on the book. The book is co-written with Steven Broschart, the person responsible for the major SilverStripe review in Germany's PHP Magazin. It's this article which has led to Germany being one of the main concentrations of SilverStripe developers globally, and hence paved the way for a German book to be written.

We are exploring options for an English book in the future.

We've now acquired the youtube.com/silverstripe address!
Fom now on it replaces our old channel.

This new youtube channel contains all the videos we've produced over the past year...

...along with interviews and recordings uploaded by others.
Go check it out and tell us what videos you like most!

Join us on Monday 17th November from 6pm at the Southern Cross bar!

We're interesting in meeting up with the local web community and those who use SilverStripe, so that we can listen to your ideas and answer your questions, technical or otherwise.

You get to meet the people behind the code so it is a great chance to rant about your favourite interface suggestion or code quirk!

We'll also be demonstrating what's coming in SilverStripe v2.3...

• Please RSVP on facebook (or say "+1" in the comments below.)

We have a new release of SilverStripe available: 2.2.3

• Download here: silverstripe-v2.2.3.tar.gz 
• Post bug reports here: http://open.silverstripe.com 
• Change log here: http://open.silverstripe.com/wiki/ChangeLog/2.2.3 

IMPORTANT NOTE

This release of SilverStripe fixes an issue that came to the attention of the SilverStripe development team earlier today.  It could
potentially let malicious users bypass the CMS security.  For this reason, we strongly recommend that you upgrade all of your sites.

If you would like to apply this fix manually, the relevant patch is available here:

http://open.silverstripe.com/changeset/64988/
http://open.silverstripe.com/changeset/64988/?format=diff&new=64988

Thanks,
Sam

A panel of judges and thousands of voters have put SilverStripe on the global stage today!

Each year, the high profile Open Source CMS awards are run by Packt Publishing, a U.K. based publisher of hundreds of technical books on software and web development.

Judged a finalist in the 2007 awards, SilverStripe has just been announced a winner by Packtpub:

"SilverStripe is today exclusively revealed as the winner of the 2008 Most Promising Open Source Content Management System. The SilverStripe project receive $2,000, holding off strong competition from CMS Made Simple in the first runner up position with ImpressCMS and MiaCMS finishing joint second runner up.

It received universal approval from the judges for its features and was praised as an excellent option for companies who want a powerful open source website that is professionally created and well supported. The judges were complimentary about SilverStripe’s scalability, use of Ajax, its healthy community and the impressive levels of input on the forums from its developers."

• Read full Packtpub announcement

We're absolutely thrilled that we can use the prize money to top up supporting our upcoming release, and how this award lets us celebrate our focus and hard work on the project. The award also reiterates just how sucessful our decision to go open source has been, which in large part comes down to you, our community of users, developers, and contributors! Thank you!

Judges' feedback

Elliot Smith wrote on his blog (and which turned up on PlanetRubyOnRails):

I was personally impressed by the slickness of the interface, and by the fact that it has been designed to scale well to large websites. The developers have obviously thought carefully about the architecture, and are aiming for the "CMS plus web platform" approach of Drupal. I was also personally impressed by the responsiveness of the development team, their willingness to work in the community, and the clarity of their vision for the product. Worthy winners. Give it a look.

Bryan Ruby also gave some insights at his website, CMSReport.com, and promised to explain more soon:

My vote also went for SilverStripe followed by ImpressCMS for second place and CMS Made Simple for third place.  Since I wasn't sure how the other judges on the panel were going to vote, I'm always a little nervous of being too far off from the consensus.  Needless to say, I feel validated.  In a few days, I'll throw my notes online for how I ranked all five finalists in the most promising category. 

Sam Minnee named one of 24 most valued open source CMS people in 2008.

In addition, SilverStripe project founder Sam Minnee has also been recognised as one of the world's most valued people in supporting open source CMS projects. Given he is the programmer and software architect most responsible for the SilverStripe project, this is a well-deserved accolade!

Celebrate with us tonight in London!

The core Wellington team took a moment to celebrate all of this with a few bottles of bubbles. However if you're in London, be sure to meet with Ingo Schommer and Tim Copeland and celebrate at today's London SilverStripe meetup which is being held at:

• Meza Bar, Soho.
  RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming.

While MySQL is an extremely versatile and hugely popular database, we have been wanting to give users of our software choice in using other databases—this is very helpful, for instance, where you might have existing applications or software running PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server and where you want tight integration.

Last year, as part of the support we received through Google Summer of Code, Philipp Krenn started work on this effort, which was then passed onto Geoff Munn, one of SilverStripe's core developers.

A few weeks ago Geoff got SilverStripe installed on PostgreSQL, along with the blog module. There is still plenty of work to go, so this won't be making the upcoming SilverStripe 2.3 release. However, if you are able to volunteer serious help as an experienced developer, please contact Geoff (geoff at silverstripe.com), as this would be awesome in moving this ambitious work forward.

Check out what the comment says in the screenshot below...

Behind the scenes of SilverStripe, three experienced business experts have provided our company with years of valuable external perspective; offering ideas, challenges, experience, and inspiration.

Pictured below, they are:

• Richard Francis, a chartered accountant and business advisor
• Nat Torkington, open source guru and O'Reilly Radar blogger
• Alasdair MacLeod, a long-serving Deloitte partner
  

Their support and ideas have been extremely valuable in company decisions like making our software open source and how to grow the company smartly, so we felt they deserved an introduction and a public thanks!

Today we passed 100,000 downloads of the core SilverStripe software. Much more comes from 2008 so far than from all of 2007; just one of the metrics showing our growth.

In addition, there's tens of thousands of other copies which were included on the cover disks of technology magazines like PHP Magazin and PC World, and where our software has been circulated on other websites.

The downloads of themes, widgets, and modules from our site is also growing quickly; they currently total about 10,000 per month. Add this to thousands of views each month of our CMS and developer videos, and it's quite a healthy traffic quota we're picking up!

Who's downloading?

Ever since SilverStripe started being downloaded, about a quarter of our website visitors have originated from the United States. This is followed in hot competition by New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and the U.K., who jump in order month by month.

Reshaped into the geography of technology choice, it looks like this:

Thanks for all the support!