Books
Books about Plone and related subjects. Most links go to Amazon, but these books are available in other well-stocked book stores as well.
A User's Guide to Plone - Amazon (3.0)
A User's Guide to Plone is a compact reference guide for creating content for Plone sites. This guide (updated in Summer 2008 to include new Plone 3 features) covers the steps involved in producing, editing, producing and organizing content, with screenshots to guide the reader through the interface. This reference guide covers content management principles and describes what is unique about Plone’s way of managing content. In addition, the book provides an exhaustive list of options available for default content types and tips for organizing content.
A User's Guide to Plone - PDF
The free PDF version (available for download under a Creative Commons license) contains a detailed Table of Contents and includes hyperlinked cross references to facilitate quick browsing. The book focuses less on extending Plone than on explaining basic features and helping content creators make full use of out-of-the-box Plone features. Although intended primarily for end users, the User's Guide to Plone also covers administrative tasks (such as user management, workflow setup, roles and navigation) which are configurable from Plone Site Setup configuration screen.
Practical Plone 3: A Beginner's Guide
A book for people getting started with building websites with Plone 3. Covers installation, site administration, building custom content types, themeing, deployment, performance optimization and more.
Professional Plone Development
Written by Plone core developer Martin Aspeli, Professional Plone Development covers Plone 3 website development in depth. This book aims to teach best practices of Plone development, focusing on Plone 3.0. It covers setting up a suitable development environment, customizing Plone's look and feel, creating new content types and forms, connecting to external databases, and managing users and groups intelligently. It also shows how to configure a production-ready server, with LDAP authentication and caching. This book focuses primarily on the developer-oriented aspect of Plone.
The Definitive Guide to Plone (2nd Ed.)
The Definitive Guide to Plone describes everything from installing Plone (on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux) to writing code for the system. The book emphasizes light customization of Plone, and shows how to fully integrate Plone into an existing Web site and application.
Expert Python Programming
Best practices for designing, coding, and distributing your Python software. Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient and easy to maintain and reuse is not so straightforward. This book will show you how to do just that: it will show you how Python development should be done. Python expert Tarek Ziadé takes you on a practical tour of Python application development, beginning with setting up the best development environment, and along the way looking at agile methodologies in Python, and applying proven object-oriented principles to your design. Buy this book with Professional Plone Development and get 25% discount on both.
Plone Live (online and print versions available)
The central purpose of this book is to help people developing Content Management Systems utilizing Plone. Readers should have at least a beginner's understanding of Python and intermediate experience with HTML and web technologies. Plone Live focuses on concepts, customization and advanced development using Plone.
Web Component Development with Zope 3 (Third Edition)
Zope is a powerful Python web application platform for developing complex web applications rapidly and collaboratively. With version 3, Zope has been rebuilt on top of a Component Architecture that combines the best ideas available from modern web platforms. This book focuses on Zope 3, though it also addresses the needs of Zope 2 developers who want to use Zope 3 features as they are backported into the Zope 2 platform. First, the key concepts of Zope and its Component Architecture are introduced. Each of Zope's capabilities is demonstrated by building a sample application and then extending it with more features. Plone uses Zope 3 technologies from Plone 2.5 onwards, and if you're a developer that writes Python, but don't know Zope — this is the book to get. Make sure you get the second edition, as the book has significant updates.
Definitive Guide to Plone (First Edition)
Free PDF of Definitive Guide to Plone (First Edition). A bit outdated, we recommend Practical Plone or the second edition of this book if you’re getting into Plone.
Building Websites With Plone
This book shows you how to use Plone to build fully customized websites easily and quickly. With this book, you will be in total control of the look and feel of your Plone websites, making them look exactly the way you want. It takes you from the basics of installing and running Plone through advanced customization of its various features. It covers managing, customizing, and extending Plone both through the web and by coding on the file system.
Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science
If you're new to programming in general, and to Python in particular, this is the perfect book to get you started with the best programming language in the world.
Dive into Python (Free)
Python is the language that powers Plone and Zope, and it's a good idea to at least know the basics of the language when developing for Plone. Dive into Python is aimed at people that have some programming language experience, but might be new to Python. The entire book is available for free online, but there is also a print version available.
CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
Fantastic book that explains everything you need to know about HTML, CSS and provides a great foundation for working with Plone.
A Comprehensive Guide to the Zope Component Architecture
Zope Component Architecture (ZCA) is a Python framework for supporting component based design and programming. It is very well suited to developing large Python software systems. The ZCA is not specific to the Zope web application server: it can be used for developing any Python application. Maybe it should be called the Python Component Architecture. This book is online and free.
A User's Guide to Plone - Amazon (2.5)
A User's Guide to Plone is a compact reference guide for creating content for Plone sites. This guide (updated in Summer 2008 to include new Plone 3 features) covers the steps involved in producing, editing, producing and organizing content, with screenshots to guide the reader through the interface. This reference guide covers content management principles and describes what is unique about Plone’s way of managing content. In addition, the book provides an exhaustive list of options available for default content types and tips for organizing content.