Silverstripe CMS spring meetup wrap-up

Last week, we had our second Silverstripe CMS meetup at our Wellington office. It was great to see the community come together to share ideas, discuss developments, and connect over pizza and drinks. If you couldn’t make it, here’s a quick recap of the evening—and a heads-up about future meetups.

Highlights from the talks

I had the pleasure of kicking off the evening with an update on CMS releases past and future. Here’s a snapshot of what I covered:

• The release timeline for Silverstripe CMS minor and major releases is available on silverstripe.org as projected by our release policies.
• CMS 5.3 (released in November 2024):
  • This version introduced some great new features, including the ability to validate inline-editable content blocks. For a full rundown, check out the CMS 5.3 release blog post or the detailed changelog.
• CMS 5.4 (releasing around April 2025):
  • Serving as a springboard to CMS 6, this version will come with extended support to ensure a smooth upgrade process for developers and organisations alike.
• CMS 6.0 (releasing in April 2025):
  • The CMS 6 release is all about modernisation and getting core code out of the way of customisations. With significant dependency upgrades and reduced technical debt, CMS 6 is designed to make it easier for developers to build powerful, customised solutions. Check out the preliminary changelog on the docs site.

Normann Lou, Senior Full Stack Developer at Somar Digital, walked us through the power of DDEV, a Docker-based PHP development environment. Here are the key takeaways:

• Simplicity: Setting up a Silverstripe site - with SSL, a working database, and everything you need to get started - takes less than 10 minutes.
• Flexibility and options: DDEV allows you to run multiple projects with different configurations simultaneously, such as varying PHP versions.
• Built-in functionality: From email testing with Mailpit to downloadable plugins, DDEV offers a host of features to streamline development workflows and help you match production infrastructure without messing with docker files directly.

Normann also introduced Vite for modern frontend building and highlighted Mailpit’s capabilities for catching local email traffic during development.

Save the date for the next meetup

I’m pleased to share that we’ll be hosting regular seasonal Silverstripe CMS meetups here in Wellington. The summer meetup is booked for Thursday, 27 February 2025. More details will follow soon, but for now, save the date:

• When: Thursday, 27 February 2025
• Where: Silverstripe, Level 2, 275 Cuba Street, Wellington
• Pizza and drinks are on us

To secure your spot (and to ensure there’s enough pizza for everyone), RSVP here.

We’re also looking into doing a meetup in Auckland and livestreaming the talks at all future meetups, so watch this space. We’ll share the details as soon as  we’ve worked them out.

Ngā mihi!

A big thank you to everyone who joined us last night—you were such a great crowd. There was heaps of enthusiasm in the room, and plenty of ideas floating about where the CMS could go next. And of course, a huge shoutout to the wider Silverstripe Open Source community for all your ongoing contributions—you make it all possible.

Stay tuned for more updates, and we hope to see you in February!