Silex Community Update | Oct 24

Hello everyone!

This month marks a major milestone for Silex! 🎉 The new official website is live, a collaborative effort between Brice (design) and Olivier (proofreading).

Let’s dive into the latest news and see what Silex has to offer!

➡️ Try Silex now on v3.silex.me

🌟 Website of the Month: The New Official Silex Website
We are thrilled to introduce the new official Silex website (now live on www.silex.me)! 🎉

After more than a year of creative collaboration, Brice designed and integrated the entire website, while Olivier meticulously proofread to ensure every detail is perfect.

The site is powered by a modern architecture: Silex for visual creation, Squidex as the CMS, and GitLab Pages for hosting. A 100% free solution, with only the domain name paid for!

Performance-wise, the results are impressive:

This website perfectly reflects Silex’s independent spirit and provides a fast and smooth user experience. We can’t wait to hear your feedback!

🚀 October Development Updates
This month, the Silex team has brought several significant improvements to the project:

• Squidex Integration: The integration with the Squidex CMS is a major advancement. The new official Silex website now runs on a powerful architecture: Silex + Squidex + GitLab Pages, providing a similar user experience to Webflow + Webflow CMS, but using free and open-source tools. In Silex, you design and manage the look of your site, while Squidex dynamically manages the content. This combination offers a powerful, flexible, and completely free solution.

• FTP Bug Fix: Thanks to Olivier, FTP compatibility has been greatly improved. You can now publish your site to any hosting provider using FTP. Simply log in to v3.silex.me, select FTP as your publishing method, and enter your server details. The interface is user-friendly, similar to Webflow, but with the freedom to choose your hosting provider.

These updates make Silex more flexible and powerful, allowing for fully customizable content management and hosting. 🎉

➡️ Publish your site easily with v3.silex.me

💡 Tip of the Month: Custom Domains with Silex
A common question in the community is: "Does Silex offer custom domains?" The answer is simple: Silex doesn’t offer custom domains directly, but with GitLab Pages, you can easily set up a custom domain for free, or let GitLab assign you a *.gitlab.io domain.

The user experience is smooth: after publishing your site from Silex, you’re redirected to GitLab, where you can manage your domain settings directly. This gives you full control over your site’s appearance and accessibility.

🔧 Feature Request of the Month: Silex Desktop
One of the popular topics on our roadmap is the development of Silex Desktop, an installable application for Windows, macOS, and Linux. This version of Silex would allow you to work faster with local files and even offline.

A few months ago, Tarek suggested using Tauri instead of Electron for developing the app. Tauri offers many advantages, including better performance, a smaller footprint, and a reduced environmental impact. Switching to Tauri would align with Silex’s open-source and eco-friendly values, while significantly reducing the app's size.

If you’re interested in this project, feel free to join the discussion on the Silex community forum, participate on the Silex chat, or vote on the Silex Desktop roadmap to help move this feature forward!

🔗 Libre Friends: Powered by the Silex Labs Association
We’re happy to announce that the Libre Friends project, powered by the Silex Labs Association, continues to grow and welcome new members. Libre Friends is a directory of open-source software aimed at promoting tools that respect users' freedom. You can learn more by visiting the Libre Friends website.

This month, two new projects joined the initiative:

1. GrapesJS: The framework that Silex uses for front-end design. It’s a go-to tool for visual design and content editing.

2. Keila: The newsletter tool we’re using to send this very newsletter! Keila is a free, open-source solution for managing and sending email campaigns.

Of course, Silex is also part of this initiative. You can check out the Silex Libre Friends page on the Silex community website.

If you know any projects that should join Libre Friends, let us know! And feel free to explore the listed tools to discover high-quality open-source solutions!

📢 Community Contributions and Call for Testers
We’ve recently integrated the Squidex CMS into the new official Silex website. This integration is still in the refinement phase, and we’re working on clear documentation to make it easy for everyone to use this setup.

If you have a few minutes to spare, we’re looking for testers for this new configuration and proofreaders for the upcoming documentation. Your contributions will be invaluable in improving the user experience and ensuring the integration is accessible to all.

Feel free to join us on the Silex chat or the community forums to discuss further. Together, we can continue to evolve Silex!

Warm regards,
Alex Hoyau