The memberdata storage policy is the responsibility of the portal_memberdata tool/component. This tool is responsible for listing what attributes you are storing on the Member's (using a PropertyManager interface) and how they are stored (on the portal_memberdata as a BTree Object). So lets say for instance we want to store a boolean called, 'subscribe' and a 'favorite_food' string. This is the same way you would do it in CMF as well--except your HTML would be a tad simpler and you have to do the validation manually.

• open up the /manage (Zope Management Interface, aka ZMI) of the Plone site in your browser.

• select the portal_memberdata tool in the ZMI and click the Properties tab

  • Name: subscribe Value: 1 Type: boolean
  • Name: favorite_food Value: Type: string

• now we must customize the personalize_form. This is not being automatically generated (yet) so you will end up having to type lots of boilerplate code.

  • go to plone_prefs/personalize_form and click Customize

  • now below visible_ids DIV you will want to paste the following code:

    <div class="row">
        <div class="label">
            <span i18n:translate="label_display_names">Subscribe</span>
    
            <div id="subscribe_help"
                 i18n:translate="help_subscribe" 
                 class="help" 
                 style="visibility:hidden">
            Allows you to opt-in or opt-out of the newsletter subscription service.
            </div>                
        </div>
        <div class="field"
                 tal:define="subscribe python:request.get('subscribe', member.getProperty('subscribe'));
                             tabindex tabindex/next;"> 
            <input type="radio" 
                   class="noborder" 
                   name="subscribe" 
                   value="on"
                   id="cb_subscribe" 
                   checked="checked"
                   tabindex=""
                   onfocus="formtooltip('subscribe_help',1)" 
                   onblur="formtooltip('subscribe_help',0)"
                   tal:attributes="tabindex tabindex;" 
                   tal:condition="subscribe" 
                   />
            <input type="radio" 
                   class="noborder" 
                   name="subscribe" 
                   value="on"
                   id="cb_subscribe"
                   tabindex=""
                   onfocus="formtooltip('subscribe_help',1)" 
                   onblur="formtooltip('subscribe_help',0)" 
                   tal:attributes="tabindex tabindex;" 
                   tal:condition="not: subscribe" 
                   />
            
            <label for="cb_subscribe" i18n:translate="yes">Yes</label>
            
            <br />
            
            <input type="radio" 
                   class="noborder" 
                   name="subscribe" 
                   value=""
                   id="cb_unsubscribe"
                   tabindex=""
                   onfocus="formtooltip('subscribe_help',1)" 
                   onblur="formtooltip('subscribe_help',0)" 
                   tal:attributes="tabindex tabindex;" 
                   tal:condition="subscribe" 
                   />
            
            <input type="radio" 
                   class="noborder" 
                   name="subscribe" 
                   value=""
                   id="cb_unsubscribe" 
                   checked="checked"
                   tabindex=""
                   onfocus="formtooltip('subscribe_help',1)" 
                   onblur="formtooltip('uubscribe_help',0)" 
                   tal:attributes="tabindex tabindex;" 
                   tal:condition="not: subscribe" 
                   />                                  
            <label for="cb_unsubscribe" i18n:translate="no">No</label>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class="row"
         tal:define="error_favorite_food errors/favorite_food | nothing;
                     favorite_food python:request.get('favorite_food', member.getProperty('favorite_food'));">
        <div class="label">
            <span i18n:translate="label_favorite_food">Favorite Food</span>
            <div id="favorite_food_help"
                 i18n:translate="help_favorite_food" 
                 class="help" 
                 style="visibility:hidden">
            You can change your favorite food here.
            </div>
        </div>                
        <div class="field" tal:attributes="class python:test(error_favorite_food, 'field error', 'field')"> 
            <div tal:condition="error_favorite_food" 
                 tal:replace="structure string:$error_favorite_food <br />" />                                    
            <input type="text" 
                   name="favorite_food" 
                   size="25"
                   tabindex=""
                   value="member.favorite_food html_quote"
                   onfocus="formtooltip('full_name_help',1)" 
                   onblur="formtooltip('full_name_help',0)" 
                   tal:attributes="value favorite_food;
                                   tabindex tabindex/next;" />
        </div>
    </div>
    

• if you wanted to make favorite_food a required field you would edit the validate_personalize script in plone_scripts/form_scripts/validate_personalize and you could add validation rules to it. You will notice that the validation is wired up to the form for this field.

Note: This can also be done with CMFMember, which adds additional capabilities, such as workflow, to members, but at the cost of higher complexity.