Book excerpt: This is the Official Guide on the award-winning SilverStripe programming framework, authored by the creators of the open source CMS. SilverStripe is a robust and flexible website content management system (CMS) tightly integrated with an application framework. It is open source and embraces modern system architecture and agile development methodologies. Intermediate developers can implement powerful websites and web-applications quickly and customize them to their individual needs. The award-winning PHP5/MySQL-based system saves not only time and nerves for techies, but also features a straightforward interface which is a joy to use for non-technical content-authors. This Guide helps you to: Get started with SilverStripe: Learn the architecture and usability principles that underpin SilverStripe’s modern approach. Then go through the technical requirements, the installation process, and useful tools for your daily work. Learn the CMS: Practical examples show you how to use the CMS as a content author, and how to manage content, images, documents, and forms without technical knowledge. Administrators learn how to set up permissions and security groups. Develop a custom application: Use MVC and other modern design patterns to create well-structured, object-oriented PHP code and concise template markup. Let the authors walk you through creating an interactive recruitment website as practical example project. Extend through clean code and modules: Understand how SilverStripe is built on modularity and how this empowers you to build plugins and core extensions in an elegant, maintainable fashion. Use SilverStripe professionally: In-depth topics on internationalization, security, unit testing, caching, multi-page forms, and web services APIs ensure that you can build world-class websites.