Version 3 end of life
This version of Silverstripe CMS will not recieve any additional bug fixes or documentation updates. Go to documentation for the most recent stable version.

Requirements

SilverStripe CMS needs to be installed on a web server. Content authors and website administrators use their web browser to access a web-based GUI to do their day-to-day work. Website designers and developers require access to the files on the server to update templates, website logic, and perform upgrades or maintenance.

Our web-based PHP installer can check if you meet the requirements listed below.

Web server software requirements

  • PHP 7.1 or newer (no support for PHP 8)

[warning] Running CMS3 with PHP 7.4 triggers a number of deprecation warnings. It's highly recommended you disable deprecation warnings. For example, you can add the following to the bottom of your _ss_environment.php file: error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED); Read the error_reporting PHP documentation [/warning]

  • We recommend using a PHP accelerator or opcode cache, such as xcache or WinCache.
     * Note: Some PHP 5.5+ packages already have [Zend OpCache](http://php.net/manual/en/book.opcache.php) installed by default. If this is the case on your system, do not try and run additional opcaches alongside Zend OpCache without first disabling it, as it will likely have unexpected consequences.
  • Required modules: dom, gd2, fileinfo, hash, iconv, mbstring, mysqli (or other database driver), session, simplexml, tokenizer, xml.
  • Recommended configuration
		safe_mode = Off
		magic_quotes_gpc = Off
		memory_limit = 48M
  • One of the following databases:
  • MySQL 5.0+
  • PostgreSQL 8.3+ (requires "postgresql" module)
  • SQL Server 2008+ (requires "mssql" module)
  • Support for Oracle and SQLite is not commercially supported, but is under development by our open source community.
  • One of the following web server products:
  • Apache 2.0+ with mod_rewrite and "AllowOverride All" set
  • IIS 7+
  • Support for Lighttpd, IIS 6, and other web servers may work if you are familiar with configuring those products.
  • We recommend enabling content compression (for example with mod_deflate) to speed up the delivery of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  • One of the following operating systems:
  • Linux/Unix/BSD
  • Microsoft Windows XP SP3, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008, Server 2008 R2
  • Mac OS X 10.4+

Web server hardware requirements

Hardware requirements vary widely depending on the traffic to your website, the complexity of its logic (i.e., PHP), and its size (i.e., database.) By default, all pages are dynamic, and thus access both the database and execute PHP code to generate. SilverStripe can cache full pages and segments of templates to dramatically increase performance.

A typical website page on a conservative single CPU machine (e.g., Intel 2Ghz) takes roughly 300ms to generate. This comfortably allows over a million page views per month. Caching and other optimisations can improve this by a factor of ten or even one hundred times. SilverStripe CMS can be used in multiple-server architectures to improve scalability and redundancy.

For more information on how to scale SilverStripe see the Performance Guide.

Client side (CMS) requirements

SilverStripe CMS is designed to work well with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 8+. We aim to provide satisfactory experiences in Apple Safari. SilverStripe CMS works well across Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems.

End user requirements

SilverStripe CMS is designed to make excellent, standards-compliant websites that are compatible with a wide range of industry standard browsers and operating systems. A competent developer is able to produce websites that meet W3C guidelines for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and accessibility, in addition to meeting specific guide lines, such as e-government requirements.