Der Freitag: A Use Case
How we built a newspaper website in Plone

About the speakers● Gil Forcada●
Timo Stollenwerk● Kees Hink

About Der Freitag● Its a
printed newspaper● issued weekly● on Thursday● 15.000 copies across Germany● About 40 employees● Left-wing, liberal

Der Freitag Online● freitag.de● web-print
integration● numbers? – 53k articles (31k editorial), 330 comments a day, 14k members, 1041 authors, 15k visits daily, 11k unique visitors● Team: Christian Schneider + speakers

Agile Development● Scrum● Pivotal Tracker

Dexterity

Dexterity

Membership● Login/Registration: z3c.form● No membrane●
Dexterity member folder● Sync between member profile and folder with event handlers● Behavior to adapt member properties● Registration should/could go into Plone core?

Front page● Folderish structure● “Link”
objects that reference existing content● Custom views● Ability to override article title, description, image● Inline management buttons● Drag-and-drop to reorder content

Comments● plone.app.discussion● Complex custom workflow●
Blaming / editing / deleting comments● 3 community moderators● Most commented viewlet om front page● About 330 new comments each day● Allow/disallow discussion – behavior => plone.app.dexterity – dexterity support => plone.app.discussion 2.2x???

Development● Git – git merge
--no-ff – git rebase -i – git pull -r● Jenkins

Migration● Numbers – 30k articles
– 25k blog entries – 20k members – 350k comments● Transmogrifier● MySQL rel DB => Plone● Daily non-incremental migration● Daily Jenkins job● much more work than anticipated, worked well though

Performance Tests● The Grinder● In
Jenkins● Helped us identify performance issues (Diazo, catalog)● Warm-up script after instance restart

Release● Stacks of VMs● A
script to release

Production servers overview● physical server●
delivery vms● 10 workers● 1 ZEO server● 1 monitoring vm (munin)● all errors sent as mails

Production server caveats● p.a.caching is
wonderful● workers mem usage keeps growing always● really slow startup time

Servers● 3 in-house and 4
production servers● everything in virtual machines● and everything controlled by fabric● ~150 fabric tasks

Notifications● Shown in browser (“notification
area”)● Example: “you have a new comment”● Deleted on click● Created by event handler● Storage: annotation on Member object● Settings

Evaluation● Plone rocks!● What more
could you want?● Since you ask: – member profiles, notifications, limit memory usage, way to run long and intensive tasks, replication with ZODB,● Open Spaces