I feel that Silverstripe is better than Wordpress but there really isn't a definitive answer. Silverstripe can be better suited to professional developers and web development houses but also to those who have a significant budget or some custom functionality requirements. Wordpress is more suited to those with small budgets and those non developers wanting to do a lot of the work themselves.

In this post I will talk about under what circumstances Silverstripe is better than Wordpress and those that it isn't. 

What is Silverstripe?

Silverstripe is a piece of software used to make websites. It is based on PHP and MYSQL in the backend and HTML, Javascript and CSS in the front end. It is popular in some parts of the world (namely New Zealand and Australia) and is used by some large private and government sites in both countries.

It is known for having a world-class CMS (Content Management System) for non-devs to create content (like blog posts) that are shown around the site. For the developers creating the site, it provides a 'framework' of PHP for them to use which if understood well can be very useful for creating versatile and complicated sites quickly while also keeping an organised set of code that can be worked with quite easily in small or large teams.

What is Wordpress?

At a high-level Wordpress is very similar. It also uses PHP, MYSQL and in the front end HTML, CSS and Javascript. It has been a staple for powering websites for years and is used by approximately 30% of the world's websites - that's a lot!

It is well loved by its proponents and for good reason. It can make your life quite easy at times especially if you are wanting to do a lot of work on it yourself or you are not a web developer and do not have a background in building websites.

It also has a powerful CMS, however, Wordpress was originally designed as a piece of blogging software and became so popular that additional functionality was built into it. In this way, it can be quite clunky to work with at times. If you are a professional web developer this can become cumbersome and annoying - perhaps leading you to look to other pieces of software.

What are your purposes for building a site?

With those things in mind, it's very useful to choose one or the other based on what you will use it for. If you plan to create a small business website, blog or e-commerce site where you are selling basic products (like a t-shirt or soap) where the options for said product are not that complicated (ie 2 or 3 sizes and a few different prices or colour options) then Wordpress might be a great fit for you.

Small businesses often don't have a large budget to build a site but still need a presence on the web. Wordpress is quite user-friendly for non-devs and the documentation, because it is so popular, is very well understood and easy to find answers to. Every now and then as a non-developer you may find the need for some professional help but this will be to a minimum. This will lower your costs going forward also.

If you have a larger budget and need a website that does something that is uncommon or needs special attention then Silverstripe may be a great fit. For example, if you have custom software that needs to interact with the website or a load of complicated products to manage (perhaps a tour company with multiple departures, itineraries, options etc) then while Wordpress can be made to do this sort of thing Silverstripe will handle it much more elegantly. Editing complicated things like this in a CMS can become tiring for the CMS user and downright difficult for a developer to maintain.

I have used it to make very simple brochure sites as well as more complicated ones and these more simple sites can be done relatively efficiently (but still more intensive that Wordpress). Hence why Silverstripe is a popular piece of software for web development houses to use as they can execute a wide range of projects with it.

Are you a web developer or do you have someone who is who can work on the site?

To install a Silverstripe site on a server you will need some experience as a web developer. Working with file transfer (SSH commonly), GIT repositories (version control) most likely, command line tools like Composer and troubleshooting database connections etc. As such this is the realm of a paid professional not usually a business owner using Silverstripe is an advanced option.

If you don't have a background in web development then using Silverstripe is likely to be a hassle.

Do you have a lot of custom functionality for your site?

One thing I have seen is that a business may start with a Wordpress website and then as time goes on alter it in order to respond to different business needs. Wordpress in my experience is quite difficult to work within this scenario and if your site needs to alter too much it might be better to redesign it in a new software, perhaps Silverstripe.

Custom functionality might be as simple of a template redesign. Unless you have built a custom theme then you are probably using a prebuilt theme that you either purchased or downloaded to your Wordpress site for free. Altering this can be annoying. You may need to code CSS, Javascript and HTML, in order to do this and doing so from within Wordpress, can be quite an annoying workflow. You may not be able to edit the particular file you need to and so you may end up 'overriding' code from within the CMS itself. You can do this but in one example, I was forced to use some 'hacky' CSS. Not impossible but as I say, annoying. Doing this once is one thing, but having to maintain this code over a long period of time is time-consuming and will be a headache in the future.

Do you want to become a specialist in a web development niche?

One useful side effect of Silverstripe being less popular is that if you are a developer then your competition in the market of Silverstripe is less fierce than in Wordpress and in theory you can find work more easily. On the downside, most of that work is in New Zealand and Australia.

So now you know which one you need how do you go about finding what you need to progress?

If you have decided you need a Silverstripe Developer then you need to look no further. I have been using Silverstripe for 5 years and am experienced in both UX, front end and back end code. I can jump in on an existing project or handle a new project from scratch - from hosting to design to building it. Feel free to email me on hello@vinaylal.co.

My portfolio is above where you can see my previous work and I have reviews from people I have worked with in the past also. Communication of web related topics is a strength of mine.

If you have decided Wordpress is the software for you then, as it happens I also use this. Every project requires a different set of tools and my job is to give you a piece of software that fits your needs.

Conclusion:

As we can see Silverstripe can be better suited to developers and professional web development houses but also to those who have a significant budget or some custom functionality requirements.

Wordpress is more suited to those with small budgets and a 'can do' attitude.

That is my opinion on it anyhow. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments if you like.

Sources:

All information is from my personal experience with Silverstripe and Wordpress.