Introduction to Plone
Organizers’ Collaborative
CMS Series
Jan. 24, 2005
Nate Aune, IT Consultant
natea@jazkarta.com
Jazkarta - www.jazkarta.com

Who is this guy?
• B.A. Computer Science & Music Minor,
Pacific Lutheran University (1991-94)
• Study abroad and work in Copenhagen, Denmark (1994-97)
• Studied Jazz Performance & Composition,
Berklee College of Music (1997-99)
• Founded Jazkarta Consulting in New York City (2001)
• IT Director for Learning Lab Denmark (2002-2004)
• Founded Plone4Artists project (2003)
• Self-employed consultant - Jazkarta.com (2004-Present)
www.jazkarta.com

Agenda
• What is Plone?
• Who is using Plone?
• Why Plone?
• What about support?
• And hosting?
• What can Plone do? Demo
• Questions & discussion
www.jazkarta.com

What is Plone?
• open source content management system
(CMS)
• freely downloadable software under the
GPL license
• built by an international community of
friendly developers
• not owned by any single company (like
Linux)
www.jazkarta.com

Who uses Plone?
• Oxfam America
• US Aid
• United Nations
• National Health Services (UK)
• Open Source Development Labs
• Omidyar Network
• Greenpeace
• NASA Jet Propulsion Labs (Mars Rover site)
www.jazkarta.com

Oxfam America
www.oxfamamerica.org
www.jazkarta.com

National Health Services (UK)
www.npfit.nhs.uk
Text
www.jazkarta.com

International Open Source Network
www.iosn.net
www.jazkarta.com

Omidyar Network
www.omidyar.net/home
www.jazkarta.com

Open Source Development Lab
www.osdl.org
www.jazkarta.com

Street Football World
www.streetfootballworld.org
This website is an interactive and participative communication and cooperation platform for sharing good practice and
global networking for football based social projects and initiatives. These projects primarily target less privileged,
impoverished, poorly educated, war-torn and conflicting people and regions with the aim of promoting peaceful conflict
resolution, non-formal education, crime reduction, social integration and health prevention - using football as the main
tool and common language!
This platform represents a global community of these football projects, built on the principles of diversity, sustainability
and inclusiveness.
www.jazkarta.com

Ubuntu Linux
www.ubuntulinux.org
www.jazkarta.com

Learning Lab Denmark
www.lld.dk
www.jazkarta.com

VoteWatch
www.votewatch.us
www.jazkarta.com

Greenpeace Cyberactivist Community
act.greenpeace.org
www.jazkarta.com

Public Knowledge
www.publicknowledge.org
www.jazkarta.com

Human Rights Network
www.humanrights.net.nz
www.jazkarta.com

Why Plone?
• Basic content management features built-in
• Workflow tool
• 100+ add-on products (most are open
source and freely downloadable)
• Rich services such as full-text searching and
indexing and syndication
www.jazkarta.com

Why Plone? (2)
• Designer friendly
• Easy to use
• Accessibility
• Modular
• Scalable
• Multilingual
www.jazkarta.com

Plone = designer friendly
• Fully-validated
XHTML templates
• Much can be
changed with just
CSS
• Designers and
coders can work
simultaneously
without stepping on
each others’ toes
www.jazkarta.com

www.jazkarta.com

Plone = easy to use
• Strong focus on end-user
usability
• Most users need minimal to
no training
• Drag-n-drop uploading of
content
www.jazkarta.com

Plone = accessibility
• Carefully follows standards
for accessibility
• Fully compliant with text
browsers and screen
readers
• Plone pages are compliant Mrs. Habisch, from Vorarlberger
with US Section 508, and Association of the Blind and Visually
Impaired, using Plone with a braille
the W3C’s AA rating for reader
accessibility
www.jazkarta.com

Plone = modular
• Start simple and build on top of a solid
foundation
• Add/remove plug-ins with one click
• Extensible as your needs grow
www.jazkarta.com

www.jazkarta.com

Plone = scalable
• Apache
• ZEO
• pound
• Squid
www.jazkarta.com

Plone = multilingual
• Internationalization of UI
and content
• Translated out-of-the-
box into 40+ languages,
more than any other
CMS
• Supports right-to-left
languages such as
Hebrew, Arabic
www.jazkarta.com

www.jazkarta.com

ZopeChina.com
(in English)
www.jazkarta.com

ZopeChina.com
(in Chinese)
www.jazkarta.com

www.jazkarta.com

www.jazkarta.com

www.jazkarta.com

What about support?
• Free support
• Commercial support
www.jazkarta.com

Free support
• Online support from
worldwide community
• Mailing lists / newsgroups
(50 msgs/day)
• plone.user, plone.devel, plone.design,
plone.archetypes, plone.documentation
• IRC - internet relay chat
(120 users)
• #plone, #archetypes, #plonedesign on
irc.freenode.net
www.jazkarta.com

Commercial Support
• 120+ Plone/Zope solution
providers listed on
www.opensourcexperts.com
• 190+ Plone/Zope solution
providers listed on
www.zope.org/Resources/ZSP
www.jazkarta.com

Books
• Definitive Guide to Plone
Andy McKay, APress
• FREE online version: www.jazkarta.com/technology/plone/plonebook
• Building Websites with Plone
J. Cameron Cooper, Packt Publishing
• Plone Content Management Essentials
Julie Meloni, SAMS
www.jazkarta.com

www.jazkarta.com

Hosting
• Self-hosting
• Free hosting
• Commercial hosting
www.jazkarta.com

Self-hosting
• Point-n-click
installers for
Windows & OS X
• Step-by-step
instructions for
installing on Linux,
FreeBSD
• Zope has built-in
Web, FTP, WebDAV
server
www.jazkarta.com

Free Hosting
• Objectis -
www.objectis.org
• Ingenihosting -
www.ingenihosting.com
www.jazkarta.com

Commercial hosting
• Zettai - www.zettai.net
• iMeme - www.imeme.net
• Nidelven - www.nidelven-it.no/hosting
• Interlix - www.interlix.com
www.jazkarta.com

What can Plone do? Communication & Collaboration
Zope System admin
* Mailing lists (Mailboxer, PloneMailboxer)
* One file to backup: Data.fs (ZODB) using the included repozo.py script
* Discussion boards (CMFBoard, Ploneboard)
* Scalability (ZEO, pound)
* Newsletter tools (PloneGazette, CMFNewsletter, PloneNewsletter)
* Workgroups (mxmWorkGroups, GrufSpaces)
Plone webmaster tasks
* Wiki (ZWiki)
* Installing products (QuickInstaller)
* Blogging (SimpleBlog, Quills, COREBlog)
* Users/group management (GroupUserFolder, CMFMember)
* Chat (PloneChat)
* Adding portlets (PlonePortlets)
* Instant Messaging (PloneIM, CMFMessage)
* Changing colors (CSSManager)
* Contacts directory (PloneContacts)
Editing content
Resources
* WYSIWYG editor in browser (Kupu, Epoz)
* Book library (ATAmazon)
* Using a desktop application (ExternalEditor)
* Links (ATBookmarks, CMFLinkChecker)
* Using WebDAV share (Novell Netdrive Windows, Goliath OS X, MacOS X)
* RSS news feeds from other sites (CMFSin, CMFFeed)
* Inserting images on a page (PloneArticle, RichDocument)
* Open Office documents (CMFOODocument)
* Aggregating content on pages
o ListingPages, CompositePack, CMFContentPanels, mxmDynamicPage
Multimedia
* Photos (CMFPhoto, ZPhotoSlides)
Syndicating your site content
* Audio (ATAudio)
* RSS 2.0 & MP3 enclosures i.e. Podcasting (qRSS2Syndication)
* Video (lilix.movie, PloneRailroad)
* Atomz (PloneAtom)
* Flash (CMFFlashFile)
Calendaring
Searching
* Events listing (CMFCalendar)
* Search other sites (PloneSearchBox)
* Calendar of events (CalendarX)
* Search other Plone sites (PloneRSSSearch)
* Calendars published from iCal, Mozilla Calendar
* Full-text indexing of Word, PDF docs (TextIndexNG, AttachmentField)
o Calendaring, PloneiCalendar, iCalendar
* Immediate search results as you type (LiveSearch)
* Optimization for search engines (RobotsExclusionTool, qSEOptimizer)
Creative Commons Licensing (PloneCC)
Multilingual
Reporting (CMFReportTool, ReportLab)
* User interface in 40+ languages (PloneTranslations, PlacelessTranslationService)
E-Commerce
* Multilingual content (LinguaPlone)
* PloneMall
* ZWarehouse
Authentication
* PlonePayPal
* LDAP (LDAPUserFolder)
* MySQL (MySQLUserFolder)
Polls/Surveys
* Extensible (PluggableUserFolder)
* PlonePopoll, MPoll, CMFQuestions
http://www.jazkarta.com/ploneproducts
www.jazkarta.com

Thank you!
• Demo
• Questions?
• Discussion
PDF version of these slides available at:
www.jazkarta.com/intro-to-plone.pdf
List of products mentioned:
www.jazkarta.com/ploneproducts
www.jazkarta.com