TutorialsRegistering Users and allowing them to edit their details

20 December 2010 | Aram Balakjian | Security, Templates, Forms, Member, Decorators

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These days many sites require users to register to get full functionality (SSbits included!). This is something that although not avaiable out of the box in SilverStripe is quite strait forward and a great way to gain a better understanding of both the Member and Form systems. In this tutorial we are going to create a simple registration form and a page for users to then edit their details.

TutorialsDataObjects as Pages - Part 1: Keeping it Simple

4 October 2010 | Aram Balakjian | Site Tree, DataObjects, Templates, URLs | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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In this two part tutorial, I am going to show you how to display DataObjects as if they were pages. This is often very useful for times when you have lots of items that don't warrant full site tree objects, but do need to be displayed on their own on the site. In this first part displaying Staff Members we are going to keep it simple, using a Data Object Manager to manage our Staff Members and referring to their ID in the URL. Later in part 2, we will see how to use ModelAdmin to manage a Search Engine friendly product catalogue.

TutorialsControllers Instead of Pages

25 January 2011 | Ty Barho | Templates, URLs, Controllers | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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SilverStripe is great for working with Pages in the CMS.  But what if you need functionality without the need for content or all the "data fluff," like in Aram's tutorial about user registration and profile editing.  Well, believe it or not, SilverStripe is a pretty solid MVC platform, even if you're working outside of the page data objects.  It took me a while to understand how to implement true-ish MVC in SilverStripe, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to share.

TutorialsUsing Short Codes to embed a YouTube video

28 April 2010 | Daniel Hensby | CMS, Templates, WYSIWYG | Supports v2.4

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SilverStripe 2.4 has introduced shortcodes to the CMS editor. Simply, the CMS user can now add short BBCode style code to the editor area and it can then be replaced using a predefined function. For example [link id=23] could be replaced by the link to Page with an ID of 23. In fact that is exactly how internal links created in the links sidebar work in 2.4, preventing them from breaking when URLs change.

TutorialsPaginating a filtered DataObjectSet

25 October 2010 | Marcus Dalgren | DataObjects, Templates | Supports v2.4

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If you have ever tried to paginate a DataObjectSet that has been customised since fetching it from the database you will have descovered that it simply doesn't work. This short tutorial provides some great code to resolve this problem and paginate to your hearts content!

SnippetsAutomatically ?flush when in 'dev' mode

15 April 2010 | Daniel Hensby | Templates | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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Often when doing development work on a website - and particularly the templates - it can be a pain having to remember to add ?flush to the end of the URL to make sure all of your changes have come through. I'm sure that all of us have had that "d'oh" moment when we have spent too much time wondering why our changes weren't working, only to find a simple flush fixed it.

NewbiesCreating a Simple Contact Form

3 May 2009 | Aram Balakjian | Templates, Forms, Email | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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In this tutorial we are going to create a very simple contact form, like those commonly seen on most contact-us pages. This is a great introduction to SilverStripe forms for those new to the Subject and should also provide enough functionality for most people to use straight out of the box.

NewbiesBuilding a SilverStripe Theme from a Static Template

26 March 2009 | Aram Balakjian | Templates, SiteConfig, Themes | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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In this tutorial we are going to create a SilverStripe theme from a static template. While completing this tutorial, you will build a good foundation for using the SilverStripe templating language and be able to create themes with dynamic menus and content areas.

TutorialsAutofill MetaDescription and MetaKeywords on page save

28 July 2009 | Martijn van Nieuwenhoven | CMS, Templates | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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Most of my customers don't want to add meta info manually, so I add an onBeforeWrite() function to update the Meta Description field and count the keyword density of the content with a separate function and add these keywords to the Meta Keywords fields when a page is saved.

In my humble SEO opinion every page needs an unique Meta Description. Keywords seems to be less important for search engines, but why not add them automatically anyway! The function counts how many times each word exist in the Content, order the words by occurrence and glues the words to a comma separated string. In this function only words with more then 4 characters are counted, but you can adjust that if you like.

SnippetsUsing Dates in Foreign Languages

17 November 2009 | Aram Balakjian | Templates, Languages | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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With all the translatable, i18n and other translation related stuff in silverstripe, I think more than one is wondering how to achieve something simple as using dates in a foreign language... Actually, it's ultra easy if you add this 2 lines in your silverstripe powered website.

SnippetsCreating a Page Export Function

6 May 2009 | Hamish Campbell | Templates, URLs | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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Need to create an 'export' function for a page? Do it quickly and cleanly with HTTP::sendFileToBrowser. In your page controller, add a new action 'export':

SnippetsManipulating every Nth item in a <% control %> loop

16 July 2009 | Aram Balakjian | DataObjects, Templates | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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Often you will want to manipulate every nth item inside a <% control %> loop. For example say you had a gallery and you wanted every 3rd image to start on a new line, you need to be able to test each item from the template to see if it is divisible by 3 and should therefore have the clear CSS class added to it.

TutorialsCreate a front end theme switcher

17 August 2009 | Martijn van Nieuwenhoven | Templates, Forms, Themes | Supports v2.3

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So you wanna make a demo site for your customers to show all your template skills in one site. A simple theme switcher can come in handy. It's quite easy to implement this. 

First add two new functions to your Page_Controller class:

TutorialsCreating Previous and Next Buttons on a page

28 June 2009 | Aram Balakjian | DataObjects, Templates | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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When you have a number of pages which follow on from one another you may find that asking a user to return to an index or select the next item from a side menu each time they want to progress is cumbersome. In this situation having previous and next buttons at the bottom of a page becomes very useful. In this snippet we'll add these buttons and also a counter to show the current page we are on and the total number of pages.