Choosing the right Content Management System (CMS) is crucial for maintaining an effective online presence. SilverStripe is a powerful platform for creating custom websites, but as your business grows, you may find that its features and ecosystem no longer align with your business needs. WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS, offers a flexible, scalable, and user-friendly alternative.
We compare SilverStripe and WordPress and explore why migrating to WordPress could be the right move for your business.
SilverStripe vs. WordPress
User-Friendliness
- SilverStripe: While SilverStripe has an intuitive interface for developers, non-technical users often struggle to navigate and update their sites without assistance.
- WordPress: WordPress is known for its user-friendly dashboard, which makes it easy for beginners to manage content, update plugins, and add features without technical expertise.
Customisation
- SilverStripe: Customisation is a strong point of SilverStripe, offering developers extensive control to build tailored solutions. However, this often comes with a higher price tag and slower implementation time.
- WordPress: WordPress also allows customisation but offers thousands of pre-designed themes and plugins that enable rapid development at a lower cost.
Ecosystem and Support
- SilverStripe: With a smaller community, SilverStripe support relies heavily on its official resources and specialised developers.
- WordPress: WordPress powers over 40% websites on the internet, resulting in a massive community of developers, extensive online documentation, and countless forums for troubleshooting.
Cost
- SilverStripe: Projects built on SilverStripe can be expensive due to the need for custom development and ongoing technical support.
- WordPress: WordPress is open-source and free to use. While premium themes, plugins, and hosting come with costs, it remains more budget-friendly overall.
Why migrate your SilverStripe website to WordPress?
If you’re using SilverStripe and considering a move to WordPress, here are the key benefits you can expect:
Access to a Vast Plugin Library
WordPress offers over 60,000 plugins, catering to every imaginable need, from eCommerce and SEO to advanced analytics and security. SilverStripe has fewer modules, which can limit your ability to add new features without custom development.
For example, integrating an online store with WordPress is simple using WooCommerce. Similarly, SEO plugins like Yoast SEO make it easy to optimise your website for search engines without hiring a specialist.
Scalability and Growth
As your business grows, so do your website requirements. WordPress is highly scalable, making it suitable for everything from small blogs to enterprise-level websites. Its flexibility ensures that your website can evolve to meet changing business demands without needing a complete rebuild.
Enhanced SEO Capabilities
Search engine optimisation is critical for online success, and WordPress excels in this area. With SEO-friendly themes and plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO, WordPress simplifies the process of improving your website’s visibility on Google. While SilverStripe supports SEO, it lacks the user-friendly tools that WordPress provides.
Greater Community Support
WordPress’s global community is one of its biggest strengths. Whether you’re troubleshooting an issue, seeking advice on design, or looking for development help, there’s an abundance of forums, tutorials, and experts available. SilverStripe’s smaller user base makes finding quick support more challenging.
Cost Efficiency
Migrating to WordPress can significantly reduce your website’s ongoing costs. WordPress’s extensive theme and plugin library means you can achieve professional results without relying heavily on custom development. Additionally, WordPress hosting options cater to various budgets, ensuring cost-effective scalability.
Why hire a specialist when migrating a website from SilverStripe to WordPress?
Hiring a WordPress specialist such as CircleBC can be beneficial for a business that wants to migrate from SilverStripe to WordPress for several reasons:
Technical Expertise: A WordPress specialist has the technical expertise to ensure a smooth migration process. They can help with the export of content, installation, and setup of WordPress, importing content, customisation, testing and deployment of your new website, and troubleshooting any issues that may arise.
Optimisation: They can help with the optimisation of your website for search engines and performance, making sure that your new WordPress website is technically sound and ready for launch.
Customisation: They can help customise your website to match your business’s specific design and functionality requirements.
Integrations: They can help with the integration of third-party tools and services that are needed to match or enhance the functionality of your previous website.
Redirects: They can help with the setup of redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs, to maintain the SEO and prevent any 404 errors.
Training: They can provide training on how to use and maintain your new website, ensuring that your staff is comfortable with the new platform.
Support: They can provide ongoing support and maintenance for your website, which can be beneficial for businesses that don’t have the resources or technical expertise to handle these tasks in-house.
Moving to a different CMS can be daunting, especially when you’re not familiar with the new platform, however choosing the right support partner can make the entire process much easier and ensure that your transition is a success.
CircleBC are WordPress experts and can easily help you with the seamless transition from SilverStripe to WordPress as well as providing ongoing support and maintenance long after your WordPress site has gone live.
Whether you want to simply migrate your content and layout from SilverStripe over to WordPress, or want to undertake an entire redesign, we’ve got you covered!
We can also help you with setting up the following:
- Website hosting
- Email hosting and migration
- Custom data migration
- Custom eCommerce functionality and third-party integrations
- Documentation and training on how to manage your new WordPress website
While SilverStripe is a powerful CMS for customised websites, WordPress offers unmatched flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. Its vast ecosystem of themes, plugins, and community support makes it the ideal choice for businesses looking to future-proof their online presence.
If you are looking to migrate your website from SilverStripe to WordPress, and you don’t have the inhouse resources to complete the migration for you, we can manage the process end to end. Our team of WordPress experts will ensure that your conversion is done correctly, quickly, and efficiently, and that your website is working properly on the new platform. We can also provide the peace of mind that your website will be secure and that you have ongoing WordPress support when you need it.
CircleBC have helped businesses across Australia, including Sydney,
Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Hobart, and Darwin with their WordPress website development and support.
Give the team at CircleBC a call, the initial consultation is complimentary and obligation free 1300 978 073.