Silverstripe CMS meetup: highlights and sneak peeks

Last Thursday, we hosted a Silverstripe CMS meetup in our Wellington office—the first one since 2021. We had a great turnout with around 20 people from a bunch of organisations across Wellington.

As the Senior Product Developer, I talked about some of the highlights from Silverstripe CMS 5.2, which was released in April. This release included a variety of improvements from new form fields to ORM improvements. Check out the 5.2 release announcement for more details.

I also gave a heads-up about some upcoming changes in the CMS 5.3 and CMS 6 releases. CMS 5.3 is set for an October release this year, while CMS 6.0 is scheduled for April 2025. You can see more about the timing of upcoming releases on the roadmap page to keep track and schedule your project upgrades.

You can also keep up with the latest developments or the CMS Squad via the sprint announcements topic in the forum, where we provide fortnightly updates.

James Ford, Creative Director at Silverstripe, gave a sneak peek of an experimental new look for the CMS. Silverstripe CMS 6.0 will be released with a new look in the CMS, and work has already been put in to design what that might look like and put it in your hands early.

So, we’ve released two experimental modules that let you install the new look in your Silverstripe CMS 5 projects right now:

• Betamask - a new look for the CMS
• Betamask Admin Overlay - a utility bar matching betamask theming for your front-end

We’d love to hear your feedback on these modules—that feedback will help us understand what works for when we start work on the changes for CMS 6.

James also showed off another experiment—editing content directly in the front-end. However do note that these new modules are experimental and not supported under our current policies.

A big thank you to everyone who came along and shared your thoughts with us. Your feedback and ideas are invaluable to us.

Stay tuned for more events and opportunities to connect with the Silverstripe CMS community.