How-tos

Audiences
Any audience
End Users
Server Administrators
Site Administrators
Integrators, Customizers
Developers
Advanced Developers

Any audience

Basic Use: General

What documentation should I read?

This how-to is intended as a brief overview of what documentation you should read - and when - to get you started.

Asking for Help with Errors & Problems

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

How to use this resource

A brief description of how you use and contribute to the Help Center.

Contributing to plone.org: Writing Documentation for plone.org

Reviewing and submitting documentation

Please follow these guidelines when reviewing documentation. If you are a documentation contributor, following these guidelines will speed publication of your documentation submissions.

Visual Design: Internet Explorer Fixes

Making your existing Plone install look better in Internet Explorer 7

When Internet Explorer was released and pushed down to users as a mandatory upgrade, it displayed some visual artifacts with existing Plone sites. Here's how to fix most of them before the next Plone release.

End Users

Basic Use

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Basic Use: General

Create a Photo Album

How to use Plone's thumbnail display mode to create a photo album.

Creating links to content

How to link to resources located inside and outside the site.

Set your member preferences

How to configure your member preferences after you have joined a Plone site.

Working with Structured Text

A cheat sheet for the different Structured Text formatting commands.

Basic Use: Kupu / Visual Editor

Getting ExternalEditor (zopeedit) working on Windows

How to get the External Editor feature of Plone to work on Windows.

How to Add New Class Styles to Kupu

This document explains how to add and define new custom class styles for use in kupu.

Installation

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Configuration and Set-Up

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Configuration and Set-Up: Other

Getting ExternalEditor (ZopeEditManager) working in Firefox on Mac OS X

How to get the External Editor feature of Plone to work using Firefox on Mac OS X. (Updated!)

Configuration and Set-Up: Site-Wide Settings

How to Add New Class Styles to Kupu

This document explains how to add and define new custom class styles for use in kupu.

How to Embed Flickr, YouTube, or MySpace Content

Normally, Plone will not allow you to paste the code necessary to embed videos, slideshows or music players from popular websites such as Flickr, YouTube and MySpace. Learn how to adjust the HTML filtering to allow this content.

Developing for Plone

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Managing Content

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Managing Content: Integrating External Content

How to Embed Flickr, YouTube, or MySpace Content

Normally, Plone will not allow you to paste the code necessary to embed videos, slideshows or music players from popular websites such as Flickr, YouTube and MySpace. Learn how to adjust the HTML filtering to allow this content.

Navigation: Site Searching

Enabling Members to Search your Plone site from Off-Site using Firefox's DictionarySearch Extension

This howto will explain how to enable your users/members to search your Plone site using Firefox's DictionarySearch extension.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Permissions & Authorization

Sharing Editing Capabilities for Pages and Folders

This describes how to give a user of your site editing privileges of particular folders or pages.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Workflow

Sharing Editing Capabilities for Pages and Folders

This describes how to give a user of your site editing privileges of particular folders or pages.

Visual Design: Minor Adjustments

How to Add New Class Styles to Kupu

This document explains how to add and define new custom class styles for use in kupu.

Server Administrators

Basic Use

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Installation

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Installation: Linux

Setting up Plone and Zope from source

This howto shows you how to get up and running as quickly possible with Zope and Plone installed from source. It presumes a UNIX-like environment, but the techniques may be useful on Windows as well.

Basic Install of Python/Zope/Plone server on Fedora Core 5

Managing your own server on Linux or Mac OS X instead of having it hosted or using the Windows installer version can give you greater speed, flexibility and power as well as being able to load the latest and greatest Python/Zope/Plone software. This is a basic howto for installing of Python/Zope/Plone on Fedora Core 5. This setup will allow other installations of Zope and Plone side by side so it is great for present and future migrations. This may work for other distros and Mac OS X. This will briefly show the installation for Python 2.4, Zope 2.9.3 and Plone 2.5. Other recent versions may be similar.

Plone on Debian (Etch)

Most important parts you need to know about using Plone on Etch the Debian-way

Installation: Windows

Install ZEO on Windows

How to migrate a Plone instance created using the Windows installer over to ZEO.

Run Plone off CD-Rom

Put Zope and Plone on a live CD-ROM for demonstration purposes

Virtual Hosting serveral sites under Windows

This howto explains how to use the VirtualHostMonster to host several sites under Windows.

Enable Indexing of pdf and word docs with Windows in Five steps:three minutes of your times without problems!

Very Simple Five istructions to index pdf and word documents in Plone with Windows

Configuration and Set-Up

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Enable full-text indexing of Word documents and PDFs in Plone 3.0 (GNU/Linux)

How to install third-party command-line converters to enable full-text indexing of Word documents and PDFs in Plone 3.0 on GNU/Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, et. al.)

Secure Zope

Keep hostile remote and untrusted local users from abusing your Zope installation.

Configuration and Set-Up: Backup

Backup and recover Data.fs in linux

bash scripts to backup linux and use repozo.py for backing up Data.fs Also includes a script to recover Data.fs to a specific point in time

Backup Plone

There are several ways to backup all data related to Plone.

Configuration and Set-Up: Other

Multiple Plone sites per zope instance -- using separate Data.fs files for each one.

Using Zope's mount point facilities, distinct ZODB files under the main zope root can be created to host Plone sites.

Plone system resources for a small site

What kind of system resources you need to run a small Plone site.

Mounting content from one ZEO storage into an existing Plone site

If you want to have your plone site segmented into different folders that use different filestorages this is what you need to know. Splitting up your page accross different filestorages is also useful if you want to prevent one storage of becoming too big, backup them separately or use different cache-sizes (eg for catalogs)

How to hack your Zope 2 instance so that you can install Python packages using easy_install

This HOWTO guides you through the few steps required to make your Zope 2 instance on Unix/Linux/Mac OSX a full-blown Python environment where you can install Python packages without administrator rights, using the convenient EasyInstall tool.

Mounting portal_catalog in a separate ZODB

This how-to explains how to have the portal_catalog stored in an separate ZODB.

Simple /etc/rc.d/init.d script for Zeocluster

I tested this on Fedora Core 5 and the default "Universal" Linux installer for Plone 2.5.1. I think this is a useful script to start zeo/zope rather than using the startcluster etc command line scripts

Configuration and Set-Up: Performance

Cache Content

How to change Plone's default cache settings so you can cache pages on your site.

HA-Cluster with loadbalancing for Zope (and Plone)

This document describes an HA-Cluster solution for Zope and Plone with load-balancing over two physical machines, based on ZEO. We assume NO single point of failure, and use NO commercial software.

Simple "Squid on Windows" caching solution

How to implement "Zope + Squid" on Windows

Simple Plone Clustering with Squid and Pound

A simple Squid/Pound/Zope setup. Now you can do it without rewrite rules or redirector scripts and take advantage of squid acceleration and the scalability of ZEO.

Squid integration pointers

Some references to setting up Squid as a caching server in front of Zope.

Sticky sessions and mod_proxy_balancer

This document explains how-to enable sticky sessions in a Zope/Plone HA cluster so authenticated users are routed to the same back-end.

Threads vs. Cache size

Understanding how the number of running Zope threads should influence your choice of ZODB cache size.

Running Plone on a system with limited memory

Gives some pointers and tools on how to run Plone on a system with little memory - typically 512MB or less.

Configuration and Set-Up: Relational Databases

Archetypes using mysql and postgresql

A short tutorial about how to make an archetype that stores data in and reads data from a mysql or a postgresql table. It works on plone-2.5.2 on zope-2.9.5.

Configuration and Set-Up: Site-Wide Settings

Enable full-text indexing of Word documents and PDFs in Plone 3.0 (Windows)

How to install third-party command-line converters to enable full-text indexing of Word documents and PDFs in Plone 3.0 on Windows

Developing for Plone

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Developing for Plone: Other

How to Embed ViewCVS in Plone

An example of how to 'persuade' ViewCVS to embed in a Plone page. Provides an account of how to do rewriting with Apache, converting ViewCVS, and adding externally created, dynamic content to Plone pages.

Developing for Plone: Tools and Processes

Coping with a Live Spinning Zope

Most people who have been working with Zope and Plone for some time have learned, on one day or another, what it means for Zope to "spin". It incessantly uses 100% cpu, or very close, and, though it accepts HTTP connections, it never responds, requiring a restart. If your live Zope is spinning, you are most assuredly not having a good day, but there are some measures you can take to ease your pain.

View an object's catalog information

This little utility is really useful to me. I'm not sure it's posted elsewhere, it comes from Joel Burton originally. Inspect any content on your site (including folders) by appending /getCatInfo to the URL.

Developing for Plone: Tools and Processes: Debugging

Coping with a Live Spinning Zope

Most people who have been working with Zope and Plone for some time have learned, on one day or another, what it means for Zope to "spin". It incessantly uses 100% cpu, or very close, and, though it accepts HTTP connections, it never responds, requiring a restart. If your live Zope is spinning, you are most assuredly not having a good day, but there are some measures you can take to ease your pain.

View an object's catalog information

This little utility is really useful to me. I'm not sure it's posted elsewhere, it comes from Joel Burton originally. Inspect any content on your site (including folders) by appending /getCatInfo to the URL.

Managing Content

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Managing Content: Folders

How to create default content in Member Area

Each member gets a member area created when they first log in. How to get certain content put in this folder by default?

Managing Content: Integrating External Content

Integrate external content in Plone

Describes how I managed to integrate some external content into my plone site using the plone look.

Managing Content: Other

Clean up link spam on your site

Spammers have targeted Plone sites recently by posting content that will redirect you to a different site. Here's how to protect your site — and how to clean up if you have already been hit by this.

Navigation: Site Searching

Track searches with AWStats

The log analyzer AWStats is a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced server statistics graphically. Configure your Extra Sections to track what your users are looking for.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions

Login Redirect Problems from Bad ACTUAL_URL

When you're prompted to log in to access something on your site, your redirect doesn't work and you have VirtualHost stuff in your ACTUAL_URL

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Active Directory and LDAP

Authenticating with Active Directory

How to make Plone authenticate against Active Directory. (document needs updating because Plone 2.5.x uses PlonePAS instead of GRUF)

Using LDAP in Windows

Active Directory Authentication via LDAP - for win32. This document needs updating to reflect use of PlonePAS instead of GRUF with Plone 2.5.x

LDAP Authentication with Plone (versions 2.1.x and 2.0.x only and NOT 2.5 or later)

Here are some general tips on how to get Plone versions 2.1.x or earlier working with LDAP authentication. This is NOT RELEVANT to Plone 2.5 or later (using PlonePAS)

Single Sign On In Windows Domains

This HowTo tells you how to integrate Zope, Plone and Apache in a Windows domain such that domain users are automatically logged into Plone. It's also a tutorial about getting Zope/Plone to run behind an Apache web server using FastCGI.

Authenticating to a Complex Active Directory Infrastructure

Authenticating to Active Directory is easy, relatively speaking. This how to will explain how to authenticate to Active Directory in a complex environment (i.e. multiple authenticating domains).

Plone 2.5 and OpenLDAP Integration for Users and Groups

How to have your Plone 2.5 site read from and write to your OpenLDAP Directory for users and groups on a Linux server

Authenticating With Active Directory

How to make Plone authenticate against Active Directory Using PlonePAS

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Login Authentication

Make Plone more secure: Disabling Base64-encrypted cookies with SessionCrumbler

By default, Plone creates a Base64-encrypted cookie that stores your password whenever you login. Here is a different approach that uses sessions instead of cookies for login data.

Reset a password (without having to email one to the user)

This procedure uses the Zope Management Interface, You must have access to the Zope Management Interface to be able to do this procedure.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: User Management

Reset a password (without having to email one to the user)

This procedure uses the Zope Management Interface, You must have access to the Zope Management Interface to be able to do this procedure.

How to create default content in Member Area

Each member gets a member area created when they first log in. How to get certain content put in this folder by default?

Upgrading and Moving: Moving

Moving a Plone site

How to move a Plone site from one Zope instance to another.

Site Administrators

No section

How to setup and use KSS on Plone 3.0

KSS is part of Plone 3.0. We try to answer to some common questions about the use and setup of KSS for Plone 3.0.

How to setup and use KSS on Plone 3.1

Answer to some common questions about the use and setup of KSS for Plone 3.1.

Basic Use

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Basic Use: General

Create a Photo Album

How to use Plone's thumbnail display mode to create a photo album.

Using WebDAV

Mounting a Zope/Plone site with WebDAV is a great way to manage content. This howto explains how this can be done in various operating systems.

Basic Use: Kupu / Visual Editor

Allow all inline styles in Kupu

How to disable Kupu's filtering of all inline styles

Embedding videos in kupu

Since version 1.4 (still in active development), Kupu supports embedding videos or rather does not prevent you from doing it. Here's how to make Plone play nicely, too.

Resizing images in Kupu

How to enable image resizing in Kupu editor

Installation

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Configuration and Set-Up

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Configuration and Set-Up: Other

Changing the Admin Password

How to change the password of the default administrator user.

Create a reviewer account

How do I create a reviewer account to publish pending documents?

Mounting portal_catalog in a separate ZODB

This how-to explains how to have the portal_catalog stored in an separate ZODB.

GenericSetup: Unregistering custom Import steps

If a custom product accidentally registers a GenericSetup "Import Step" on your site, there's currently no way to remove via the portal_setup tool. This how-to provides the steps for unregistering custom import steps from your Plone site.

How to manage portlets in Plone 3

This document shows how to manage portlets from within Plone 3

Configuration and Set-Up: Performance

HA-Cluster with loadbalancing for Zope (and Plone)

This document describes an HA-Cluster solution for Zope and Plone with load-balancing over two physical machines, based on ZEO. We assume NO single point of failure, and use NO commercial software.

Sticky sessions and mod_proxy_balancer

This document explains how-to enable sticky sessions in a Zope/Plone HA cluster so authenticated users are routed to the same back-end.

Configuration and Set-Up: Relational Databases

Archetypes using mysql and postgresql

A short tutorial about how to make an archetype that stores data in and reads data from a mysql or a postgresql table. It works on plone-2.5.2 on zope-2.9.5.

Extracting Data from Microsoft SQL using ZPT

The following should hopefully advise on how to extract data from MS SQL into a plone site.

Configuration and Set-Up: Site-Wide Settings

Add a new MIME Type

This How-to will traverse the steps required in order to add a MIME type in Plone. By consequence, it is also a How-to get Plone to treat Microsoft Project files properly.

Allow Discussion on Content

How to enable a content type to be discussable across entire site.

Change Available Types for Events

How to change the types of events (e.g. "meeting" or "appointment") available to the standard Plone Event type.

How to Embed Flickr, YouTube, or MySpace Content

Normally, Plone will not allow you to paste the code necessary to embed videos, slideshows or music players from popular websites such as Flickr, YouTube and MySpace. Learn how to adjust the HTML filtering to allow this content.

Developing for Plone

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Managing Content

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Managing Content: Export

Adding a del.icio.us link/icon to your Document Actions

This howto will explain how to add an icon to your Document Actions, so that users can add your page to their del.icio.us bookmarks.

Export member data to CSV

A quick step by step on exporting your Plone member data as a comma separated file.

Managing Content: Folders

Adding Drag & Drop re-ordering to older Plone instances

You are maintaining some older Plone instances that you don't want to update, but want that fancy drag and drop folder re-ordering of Plone 2.5? Then this is for you.

Managing Content: Integrating External Content

How to Embed Flickr, YouTube, or MySpace Content

Normally, Plone will not allow you to paste the code necessary to embed videos, slideshows or music players from popular websites such as Flickr, YouTube and MySpace. Learn how to adjust the HTML filtering to allow this content.

Managing Content: Links

Creating Link Types that Take You Directly to the Link

How to create new content types based on the built-in link type that behave slightly differently, taking you directly to a link, rather than taking you to a page about the link.

Open External Links in New Window

Shows how to automatically open all external links in a new window

Managing Content: Other

Restrict the content types in the 'add item' menu

You can restrict the content types that show up in the 'add item' menu in several ways.

NewsItems archive using SmartFolders and expirationdate

This howto shows a way to separate current news from archived ones using expiration date and smartfolders by making the catalog return expired items too.

Using the Zope Undo system to "roll back"

"undelete" or "roll back" information in a plone site using the Zope Undo system.

Managing Content: Syndication

Add the body text to your rss feed (2)

a revised How-To "Add the body text to your rss feed"

Navigation: Portlet

Creating a Flat Navigation Portlet

How to create a navigation portlet that shows the contents of a single folder.

Navigation: Site Searching

Add "Advanced Search" to Search Box

This howto provides details on removing the "search" tab from the top of the portal and adding an "advanced search" link below the search box.

Track searches with AWStats

The log analyzer AWStats is a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced server statistics graphically. Configure your Extra Sections to track what your users are looking for.

Navigation: Tree

How to hide an item from the navigation tree even it is the current item

This how-to is about some steps one can follow to hide certain items from ever showing up in the navigation tree, including the case when they are the current items

Users, Authentication, and Permissions

Login Redirect Problems from Bad ACTUAL_URL

When you're prompted to log in to access something on your site, your redirect doesn't work and you have VirtualHost stuff in your ACTUAL_URL

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Active Directory and LDAP

ActiveDirectory with read and write functionality

Plone supports ActiveDirectory authentication out of the box, but not writing to it. This is a complete example with screenshots and monkey patches to accomplish that. It shows how to completely move storage of users, groups and roles to ActiveDirectory.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Login Authentication

Close site so people can't add themselves as users

How to close the site so that users can't sign themselves up.

Authenticate users from PostgreSQL using SQLUserFolder

How to use SQLUserFolder to authenticate Plone users from a remote PostgreSQL database.

Cookies: Making them last longer than a session

This will enable users to remain logged in beyond one browser session.

Fix broken login form

You're running Plone 2.5 or higher and your log-in form is a naked page with just a form saying "Please log in" that doesn't even redirect correctly?

How To Setup SQLPASPlugin to Authenticate Against A PostgreSQL Database

Documents the setup of SQLPASPlugin for SQL based authentication in Plone 2.5, using PostgreSQL.

OpenID Support

This document describes how you can use OpenID with a Plone site.

Reset a password (without having to email one to the user)

This procedure uses the Zope Management Interface, You must have access to the Zope Management Interface to be able to do this procedure.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Permissions & Authorization

Setup a Plone 3 site with public and restricted content

A relatively simple scheme for setting up your Plone 3 site with public (ie. anonymous), member, and restricted access.

Creating a private Plone site

How to make your site only accessible to logged-in users.

Adding a "Sharing" action-tab to your product/type

Two methods for adding a "Sharing" action-tab to your Plone product or item type.

Sharing Editing Capabilities for Pages and Folders

This describes how to give a user of your site editing privileges of particular folders or pages.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: User Management

Batch-adding Users to Plone using CSV (Excel) files

How to import/create new users from CSV- a.k.a. Excel-files

Change the title of the Members folder

How to change the title of the "Members" folder

Converting single user Plone site to multiuser review based CMS site

One might want to convert an existing single user Plone site to real CMS where people can submit content and it has to be reviewed. This how to gives guidance to achieve the goal.

Export member data to CSV

A quick step by step on exporting your Plone member data as a comma separated file.

Moving users between portal instances

Sometimes, it's necessary to create a fresh Plone site and move the users, groups and member data from the old instance to the new one. Here's how to do it.

OpenID Support

This document describes how you can use OpenID with a Plone site.

Reset a password (without having to email one to the user)

This procedure uses the Zope Management Interface, You must have access to the Zope Management Interface to be able to do this procedure.

Users, Authentication, and Permissions: Workflow

Setup a Plone 3 site with public and restricted content

A relatively simple scheme for setting up your Plone 3 site with public (ie. anonymous), member, and restricted access.

Disabling workflows site-wide

How to disable workflows if you don't need them for your site.

Displaying only published items in folder listings to anonymous users.

If you don't do this, Plone's folder listing option will display both visible and published items to anonymous users.

Implement edit-view modes

Make it possible for users to show and hide the editable border and content tabs from a standard Plone site.

Make a complete folder structure private

This how-to summarizes the steps needed to make all elements below a private folder private.

Restricting access to folders with "shared" users

How to set access to a particular folder for a "collective" user - that is, viewing published content in this folder requires logging in under a shared username/password.

Sharing Editing Capabilities for Pages and Folders

This describes how to give a user of your site editing privileges of particular folders or pages.

Usage of Roles

Using the default roles provided by Plone.

New workflows in Plone 3

Plone 3 ships with a set of new workflows giving site administrators more choices when managing the ways their users interact with site content.

Visual Design: Logo

Change the Logo

Providing your own logo is usually one of the first things you need to do. Here you learn how to do it.

Visual Design: Slots, Portlets, Viewlets

Controlling portlets

Shows how to control which portlets (the boxes on the left and right hand side) show up where.

Creating a Flat Navigation Portlet

How to create a navigation portlet that shows the contents of a single folder.

Visual Design: Tabs

Tabs with drop-down menus using the suckerfish method

Three step customization of Plone 2.1 and 2.5 that will show a menu under the tab the mouse pointer is over. The menu will be shown if that tab is a folder or a similar type of container with items inside that will appear as menu items.

Visual Design: Templates

Creating random rotating images anywhere in your Plone site

Need to have a rotating image on your home page each time a user visits your site? By creating a simple Python script, you can achieve this by using only the <img> tag.

CMF Expressions

Brief overview of what CMF Expressions are and what variables they have available.

Display multiple paragraphs in the description field

Plone by default stores multiple line breaks in the Description field, but does not display them. This simple change to a product view template will make them visible in view mode.

Internationalization and Localization

How to update language files - Plone translation files

Plone has files with translations for each language. These files are updated by the Plone i18n team and translators from all over the world. Web masters should update the files from time to time. This how-to shows you how to update the files on your Plone site.

Product (skin) localization

Plone custom product (skin) localization using a custom i18n domain

Integrators, Customizers

No section

How to setup and use KSS on Plone 3.0

KSS is part of Plone 3.0. We try to answer to some common questions about the use and setup of KSS for Plone 3.0.

How to setup and use KSS on Plone 3.1

Answer to some common questions about the use and setup of KSS for Plone 3.1.

Basic Use

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Basic Use: General

The novice steps from www.plone.org to mysite running plone

Some links and references ordered in a needed way

Using topics and Smart Folders

Things you should know about topics and Smart Folders in order to make sensible use of them.

Basic Use: Kupu / Visual Editor

Embedding videos in kupu

Since version 1.4 (still in active development), Kupu supports embedding videos or rather does not prevent you from doing it. Here's how to make Plone play nicely, too.

Kupu - enabling color chooser

Use this how-to to enable a color chooser in kupu. And you can enter content incorrectly to your heart's content.

Kupu - one touch full screen (zoom) editing

Use this to open existing douments in zoom mode with one mouse click....and to save documents without "unzooming" and scrolling.

Installation

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Installation: Windows

Setting up Buildout Using the Windows Installer for Plone

All the steps necessary to set up a buildout environment on Windows system using the Plone Windows installer as a base.

Configuration and Set-Up

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Configuration and Set-Up: Other

GenericSetup: Unregistering custom Import steps

If a custom product accidentally registers a GenericSetup "Import Step" on your site, there's currently no way to remove via the portal_setup tool. This how-to provides the steps for unregistering custom import steps from your Plone site.

Configuration and Set-Up: Relational Databases

How to add a File System Z SQL Method

How to move Z SQL Methods out of the ZODB and onto the file system.

Move your ZSQL methods to the filesystem

Make your Plone/Zope products more maintainable by storing ZSQL methods in your product's skins directory.

MySQL connectivity in Zope/Plone

Basics how to connect MySQL from Zope and Plone.

Synchronizing Plone Content with an ODBC database using pyodbc

Describes how to synchronize via ODBC in Microsoft Windows systems. The library used for getting the data via ODBC is pyodbc.

Configuration and Set-Up: Site-Wide Settings

HTML Filtering options

A discussion of the main way Plone filters HTML.

How to force Plone to restrict the creation of short names with spaces, underscores, capital case, etc.

If you don’t know by now, Plone is case sensitive. For example, if you have a folder with a short name called “mike” it is completely different than “Mike”. This makes sense from a developers stand point because of the way Zope handles each object ID. However, from an end user standpoint they couldn’t care less.

How To Customize Error Messages

A short how-to which explains how to customize error handling such as 404 errors in Plone.

How to Embed Flickr, YouTube, or MySpace Content

Normally, Plone will not allow you to paste the code necessary to embed videos, slideshows or music players from popular websites such as Flickr, YouTube and MySpace. Learn how to adjust the HTML filtering to allow this content.

Developing for Plone

Asking for help

How to ask for help when you have a problem. Following these simple steps will make everything easier both for yourself and us.

Developing for Plone: Archetypes

Tagging your content using custom content types

Tagging is a nice way of connecting content within your Plone site (and outside of your Plone site too). Here's how to add this functionality to your own content-types.

Extending ZopeSkel with your own Templates

A brief explanation of how to make your own ZopeSkel templates, as well as local commands for rapidly building projects, archetypes, and schema.

Developing for Plone: Archetypes: Creating and Extending Content Types

Tagging your content using custom content types

Tagging is a nice way of connecting content within your Plone site (and outside of your Plone site too). Here's how to add this functionality to your own content-types.

Adding an index to the portal catalog

How to add a new index to the portal catalog

Extending ZopeSkel with your own Templates

A brief explanation of how to make your own ZopeSkel templates, as well as local commands for rapidly building projects, archetypes, and schema.

Developing for Plone: Other

Add indexing attributes to arbitrary content types

How to invoke the shadowy and mysterious ExtensibleIndexableObjectWrapper to do something totally useless.

Create and Use an External Method

Zope External Methods allow you to write and register python scripts that can be called through-the-web to manipulate your Zope/Plone instance. The main difference is that these can do things with a much higher privilege level since they are located on the file system, not in the web interface.

Developing for Plone: Overview

Plone CMF ZOPE - What supports what?

This is a first attempt at creating an overview of which part (Plone/CMF/ZOPE) implements which functionality of Plone 3.0

Developing for Plone: Tools and Processes

View an object's catalog infor