Development & Integration

Website development is at the core of what we do at SilverStripe. We have built hundreds of websites for clients across the planet and we love doing it. Our proven open source CMS and web framework make up the base on which we build your site.

Whether you want to create a brand-new website or migrate an existing one, we use the latest web development techniques (and even create a few of our own), intelligently apply them to your site, and give your users an outstanding experience.

The distinction between websites and web applications is less relevant than it once was. Business software, including internal processes, are moving increasingly from desktop applications to the web, and geographically disperse people collaborate through web-based tools.

Nearly all of our projects have at least some application components. In fact, we split the SilverStripe CMS from the Sapphire framework to accommodate this industry evolution. Doing so allows us, for example, to model your custom business processes and create multiple user interfaces based on business needs.

Because no two web applications are the same, every project is tailored specifically to your business needs. However, because the SilverStripe CMS and the Sapphire framework are open source, we can build upon the foundation of the SilverStripe platform so you can take advantage of a rich history of design and technical best practices. 

SilverStripe builds accessible and user-friendly sites based on web standards and best practices. We promote high quality standards within our industry to provide a better experience for your website visitors.

Standards compliance is important to make sure your site works for a wide range of audiences with different abilities and technical setup, and makes your site more search-engine friendly. Accessible sites with clean, valid code are easier to maintain, lowering your ongoing costs for updating the site or adding new features.

New Zealand public sector entities must comply with the New Zealand Government Web Standards, and other countries have similar standards and regulations. Accessible websites take you a long way towards compliance, and we can advise you on how to meet the non-technical requirements.

There's a lot to consider when taking business money transactions online. Whether you need a simple mechanism to process one-off payments or you make your living selling goods online, you need security, accuracy, and confidence.

We can build custom e-commerce solutions for you and help you with setting up your online store, usability, integration with payment gateways, ensuring transactions are secure, inventory management, reporting, and integration with other backend systems.

Few projects start from scratch and are fully self-contained. Most likely, what we build for you will work with your existing systems or with third-party applications or databases. Every integration is different and tailored to your specific business needs.

In the past, we have successfully integrated with diverse systems that deal with environmental data, geospatial data, document management systems, payment gateways, journey planning systems, and many others.

New web projects often have existing content from previous websites that needs to be migrated to the new site. We can migrate this content in a number of different ways, from manual migration to a completely automated system. We work with you to come up with the solution that's best for your particular situation.

When migrating, you need to consider:

• the amount of content that currently exists, and the amount of content that will be created during the project.
• the state the content is in — will the content be migrated as is, or do you plan to rewrite it?
• the current format — are you migrating already formatted web content only, or do you wish to migrate other types of documents?
• your internal processes for creation and review.

We can write scripts to automatically pull some or all of your existing content and map it to the new site structure. We can also give you tools to easily manage large sites with many documents.

Evolving organisations have evolving needs for communication, collaboration, and efficient completion of tasks. Intranets are no longer just a means to distribute information from management to staff. Intranets need to have content relevant to the specific roles of staff members, and they should be able to find that content quickly and reliably.

We have worked with a number of different organisations to redevelop their intranets. Our experience will benefit your project when it comes to needs assessment, integration with existing systems, content planning and copywriting, search and personalisation features, and deployment within your organisation's infrastructure.

The number of people who expect to interact with your business at any time through mobile platforms is growing rapidly, and mobile users aren’t content with simply looking up information, but want to use services such as making a purchase or completing a survey.

At SilverStripe, we are enthusiastic users of the mobile web ourselves. We can integrate 3rd-party services with your site and optimise them for mobile devices, or create a special version of your site that's specifically designed for the mobile platforms.