SilverStripe CMS Jumpstart Course

Join a workshop to learn about how to rapidly build a CMS powered website on top of SilverStripe (http://www.silverstripe.org/), the free and open source PHP CMS. This course will be a condensed version of the regular 1 day jump start courses.

The workshop will highlight best-practices, arm you with a useful vocabulary and provide a solid knowledge base to aid further learning about SilverStripe CMS and Framework. To get the most value out of this course, you should already be familiar with PHP. If you are not, we suggest that you take an online tutorial before coming on the course (eg: https://www.codecademy.com/tracks/php).

We will cover how quick it is to build a CMS powered website around custom data schemas when using SilverStripe; as well as covering some current PHP and development best practices.

1. Getting a development environment up and running with Vagrant and Composer
2. See how quick and easy it is to create a custom data schema and get a CMS interface for editing content
3. Start showing the data that is managed in the CMS into front-end templates
4. Learn how to implement forms on the frontend site and storing the submissions for CMS users to access

To make the most of the workshop, you will need to bring a laptop. Ideally you will have installed the following software before arriving:

- Git (https://git-scm.com/download/ or https://desktop.github.com/)
- Vagrant (https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html)
- Virtualbox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads v4 OR v5)

Please confirm your setup by opening a terminal, navigating to a new test directory (you'll need to create this) and running:

vagrant init bento/centos-7.1
vagrant up
vagrant destroy -f

This will ensure you've got a copy of the machine ready for when the course starts.

This workshop will be run by Dan Hensby from SilverStripe; Dan is a Solutions Architect at SilverStripe London and has over 8 years experience building websites with it. SilverStripe are an established company who produce the CMS and Framework of the same name.

Schedule:
5:30pm - arrive, set up, pizza, drinks
6pm - course starts
9:00pm - wrap up, questions, drinks, pack up
(Aim to be finished by 9:30pm)

This is a free event, sponsored and hosted by SilverStripe, pizza and drinks will also be provided.