What is Plone?

Plone is a content management system (CMS) which you can use to build a web site. With Plone, ordinary people can contribute content to a web site without the help of a computer geek. Plone runs over the Web, too, so you don’t need to install any special software on your computer. The word content is meant to be general, because you can publish so many types of information, including:

A Plone web site contains various kinds of content, including text, photos, and images. These can exist in many forms: documents, news items, events, videos, audio files, any types of file and data that can be uploaded or created on a web site. Content can also be uploaded from your local computer. You create folders on a Plone web site to hold content and to create a navigation structure:

You Love Butterflies

For example, to add content about butterflies, you might add a folder named "Butterflies," then add some text to a web page in the folder:

And then you might add some butterfly photos to the folder:

You can add many types of content to a folder, including sub-folders. After adding a few reports and videos to the Butterflies folder, the content would be organized like this, with two sub-folders within the Butterflies folder:

What Goes on Behind the Scenes

You may wonder how it all works. A typical Plone web site exists as an installation of Plone software on a web server. The web server may be anywhere, often at a website server company within a "rack" of computers dedicated to the task:

The diagram shows the many cables that connect individual server computers to the Internet, across fast network connections. Your Plone site is just software and database storage software installed on one of the individual server computers. As you type or click on your computer, data is sent up and down the networking cables and communication channels of the Internet to interact with your Plone software installation on the server.

Let's simplify the diagram showing how you interact with Plone:

You use your web browser -- Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc. -- to view and edit your Plone web site, and the changes are stored by the Plone software into its database storage system.

For example, imagine your butterfly Plone web site is located at at mysite.com. You type www.mysite.com into your web browser. After you press Enter, the following sequence of events happens as your browser talks to the web server at mysite.com:

The Plone software responds:

Plone reads its database to look for information stored in mysite.com. It then sends back the web page to your computer, in a code called HTML. HTML is a computer language that describes how a web page looks. It includes text, graphics, fonts, the color of the background, and just about everything else. There are many online resources that can teach you HTML details, but one of Plone’s advantages is that you don’t need to know (much) about HTML. That’s one reason for Plone and other similar web software; to let you focus on your content, e.g., butterfly text and graphics, instead of learning a new computer language.

But back to our overview. Your web browser "renders" (translates) this HTML, and you see the resulting web page:

As you view your butterfly web page, you can choose to change it or add to it. You can also upload photos, documents, etc. at any time:

After you make your edits and click "save changes," the new version of the web page will be immediately available to anyone surfing to your site:

What does a Plone web site look like?  For years there has been a consistent design for the default Plone appearance.  The default design looks generally like this:

The Plone web site you use could have a design radically different from this, but you should be able to find common elements, such as the log in link and a navigation panel or menu.  In the default design, the navigation menu is in the left area, and usually appears as an indented list of folders in the site.  There also may be a set of tabs in the Log In, Location Information strip near the top.

We can distinguish between the design of a web site and the functionality of a web site.  For getting work done, focus on the functionality and don't worry so much about the appearance and layout of the web site.  A strength of the Plone content management system is that a web site can be radically redesigned for a new look, without affecting the underlying content and functionality. The navigation menu can be moved from the left to the right, but it works the same.  The right area can be deleted where functionality normally put there isn't needed.  The areas for left, main, and right, as depicted above and below, could be changed to top, middle, and bottom, but it would still be a Plone web site underneath.

We'll use the default Plone layout design as an example of typical divisions of the screen:

You may need to adapt these terms as needed for your Plone web site design. You may encounter varied terms for describing screen real estate, such as right and left "slots," for the left and right column areas, "portlet," or "viewlet," for discrete areas or boxes, and several other terms.

For example, we can select three web sites from the list of Plone web sites to compare:

This is the web site for Akamai, a leading provider of online web tools and acceleration technology. The header area has simple text menu choices for five main content areas arrayed horizontally at the bottom of the header area. At right, the header contains another horizontal menu and a search box.  The bottom of the header area would contain log in information, for use by the maintainers of the web site. The main graphic at top left is a focus area for eye-catching graphics and current topics. There is a main area at left center where the main text is located. The right column holds a series of "portlets." The footer contains a horizontal menu, repeating the menu choices in the header, for convenience. There is a right-most column that has zoom settings.

This is the web site for Discover Magazine. The header area contains a large horizontal menu, the "main menu," if you will, a smaller horizontal menu at upper right, and a search box. This site is rich with textual "portlets" that cover so many topic areas, which are divided into three columnar areas, left, middle, and right. The top of the middle column contains a focus area with a video. There are large interactive boxes in several places. The footer contains basic site identification information and a link to "about us." For a large web site like Discover's, maintainers of the site log in to custom editing screens, and there is much automation of data feeds -- Plone uses Zope, a sophisticated storage system, and Python, a great programming language, which facilitates intelligent "wiring" of the flow of text and graphics into the web site.

The last of the three sites to examine is the web site for Penn State University's Smeal College of Business. The header contains a logo, a horizontal menu for main topic areas, and a search box at right.  There is a main menu for this site at left, which is more traditional for a Plone web site. A large graphical area contains a rolling focus animation. There is another small graphical focus in the left column.  Three textual columns round out the design, above the basic identification footer. Maintainers of this web site enter by means of a custom log in page, with the log in and user information showing along the bottom of the topmost header area.

So, what does a Plone web site look like? Traditionally, the out-of-the-box look is like that shown at the top of this page, with header, menu, columns, and a footer.  These three sites illustrate how designers typically combine focus areas, vertical and horizontal menus, "portlets," and textual content, usually arrayed in several columns. The underlying machinery is Plone and Zope and Python, but the design "theme" or "skin" can be made to look any way the designer chooses.

Plone web sites come in many flavors, ranging from personal websites with one user to community, organization, or business websites that could have hundreds of users.  Each person who adds content to a Plone web site has their own user account.  A user account includes a user name and a password.  Some Plone sites allow people to sign up by visiting the site, clicking a Join link, and filling out basic user information. Other sites have user accounts that are created by web site administrators, in which case people normally receive emails with the user account details. 

However created, a Plone user account allows a person to log in by typing their user name and password.  Passwords are case-sensitive, which means that you have to pay attention to the uppercase and lowercase letters.  For example, if your password is xcFGt6v, you would have to type that exactly for it to work.  Passwords that have a variety of characters in them are preferred over passwords like "raccoon" or "boardwalk," as they are more difficult to guess and therefore more secure.

Anonymous vs Authenticated Web Surfing

The distinction between anonymous web surfing and authenticated (logged-in) web activity is an important one: 

Anonymous Web Surfing

     This is the normal experience for a person surfing the web.  You type the web address of a web site into your browser and you look at web pages, watch videos, view images, but you don't have to log in.  This is why this mode is called anonymous: anyone can do it just by surfing normally. Note the presence of the log in link the screen image below (top right). If there is a log in link showing, you haven't logged in -- and you are surfing the web site anonymously, as seen in the following screen capture of a new Plone web site:

Authenticated (Logged-in) Web Activity

     You know the authenticated mode of web experience if you have ever used a bank or credit card website, or any other website that involved a user account.  A bank web site will let you view your account information, fill out information forms, transfer funds, and do other actions, but only after you have logged in.  A Plone web site is not much different, except that you can do more sophisticated things.  Compare the screen image below, captured after a user called "John Smith" has logged in.  Near the top right you see links for John Smith's name and a log out link. There is another important difference you see after logging in -- the main area in the middle now has a green header strip with tabs. This sort of header strip is present when a user has rights to change an area of the website.  John Smith has the user rights to change this main area.  The tabs in the green header strip for the main area will vary somewhat, but you can count on it looking like a tabbed interface with this particular green color. In the following screen capture, user John Smith has logged into a new Plone web site:

User Roles

Equally important is the distinction between different user roles on a Plone web site.  To illustrate the simplest case, let's consider two user roles, one called member and the other called manager. Consider the different rights or "power" of these two roles:

Member

• has a user account, so can log in
• can add content, but only in specific areas, and can't change anything outside of this area; often users are given a "home area," to treat as personal space where they can add content.
  
• can not publish content so that it is visible to the anonymous web surfer, even content which they added; a person with manager role must approve content for publishing
  

Manager

• has a user account, so can log in
• can add content anywhere and has the power to change anything
• can publish any content

When you get your new account on a Plone web site, you should  be given information indicating where you have the right to add content, after you have logged in.  After logging in, if you go to a folder where you have rights, you'll see a header strip that has a green color with tabs for contents, view, edit, properties, and sharing:

You'll be able to explore to find the differences between these tabs, but here are descriptions to help you start:

• Contents - shows a list of items in a folder
  
• View - shows the view an anonymous web surfer would see
  
• Edit - shows a panel for changing a view
  
• Rules - shows a panel for controlling how an item is created and managed
  
• Sharing - shows a panel for setting rights of other users to see or edit content
• History - shows a history of change for an item
  

You also see menus in the lower part of the green header strip, Display, Add new..., and State:

Explore these also. Here are basic descriptions of these menus:

• Display - shows menu choices for setting the display type (list view, summary view, etc.)
• Add new... - shows menu choices for adding content items (images, pages, folders, etc.)
  
• State - shows menu choices for setting publication state (private, public draft, public, etc.)

These menus and tabs will offer the main ways you interact with Plone. You will become very familiar with them as you learn more about managing a Plone-powered website.

When you visit a Plone web site anonymously, or are given the web address for site maintenance, you'll see a log in button something like this:

After clicking the log in link, you'll see an input panel where you type in your user name and password:

After logging in to a Plone web site you will see some indication of your name, often along the top in the strip beneath the header. You can click on your name to manage your personal preferences, covered next.

After logging in, your full name will be posted on the right side of the header strip. Click your name to go to your personal area, called the dashboard:

You will see the dashboard panel:

When you log in for the first time, your dashboard will be empty, as the Info message explains. Portlets are specific "views" of different types of content. You can choose which ones you want in your dashboard by clicking the Edit tab, but we'll get to that in a second.  First, let's look at the Profile and Personal Preferences links at top right. Clicking the Profile link brings up a panel that shows your personal profile photograph, if you have uploaded one:

After you have created content on the web site, you can come back here to see it nicely listed.  The Edit tab for the profile, or the Personal Preferences link discussed above, will bring up the personal preferences panel:

Date entry fields include:

• Full Name - If your name is common, include your middle initial or middle name.
  
• E-mail address - REQUIRED - You may receive emails from the web site system, or from a message board, if installed, etc. When an item is required, a little red square will show alongside the item.
  
• Location text box - This is the name of your city, town, state, province, or whatever you wish to provide.
  
• Language preference selection menu - Plone excels at offering multilingual support.
  
• Biography text box - Enter a short description of yourself here, about a paragraph or so in length.
  
• Home Page web address - If you have your own web site or an area at a photo-sharing web site, for instance, enter the web address here, if you wish, so people can find out more about you.
  
• Content Editor selection menu - You have the choice of using Kupu, which lets you edit web pages with a nice graphical interface, or using a basic editing panel, which is good if you are accustomed to writing web pages using HTML (the basic "code" of web pages). The default setting is to use Kupu, and is assumed in this user manual.
• Enable External Editing checkbox - This is for switching on and off an "external" editor, if one has been installed by the web site administrator. Use of an "external" editor is mainly for web designers and programmers who do more editing of actual code, but it could be useful for volume page creation using specialized text mark-up languages. (Don't worry about this setting if you haven't heard anything about it from your web site administrator).
  
• Listed in Searches checkbox - Uncheck this box if you do not want to be listed in searches.  Normally you would want to keep this checked, because having open communications is an important goal of most Plone web sites.
  
• Portrait photograph upload - The portrait photograph will appear as a small image or thumbnail-size image, so it is best to use a head shot or upper-torso shot for this.
  

You can change your preferences whenever you wish.

Plone has several built-in "views" of news, events, recently changed items, and such. These list views are held in discrete rectangular areas called portlets. Think of a portlet as a window view of a given type of content. For example, the news portlet offers a view of recently published news items.

You control which portlets you view in your dashboard, and where they are placed.  The following screen capture shows what user Elizabeth Smith would see after logging in and clicking her own name at upper right to go to her personal area:

The dashboard appears to be empty for a new user.

Clicking the edit tab for the dashboard will show that there are portlets already assigned to the dashboard -- the dashboard view shown above is empty, because there is no content available for display in the portlets on this new web site. Here are the default portlets:

You see the News and Events portlets in the left-most column, the Recent Items portlet in the second column, and the Review List portlet in the right column. The third column does not have a portlet assigned.

A new user account on a basic Plone web site will have a dashboard like the one shown, but for a web site that has been customized with add-on functionality, there may be more portlets to choose from, and the dashboard might start out with several more placed in the columns.  For example, there could be portlets for "current weather," "stock ticker," "quote of the day," etc., depending on what is installed for the web site (such things would require custom software). Depending on what is installed for the site, the user can customize the portlets they want to see and where to place them within the four columns.

So, for the typical Plone user account, the dashboard would start with the portlets shown above, and later would be "populated" as news items, events, and other content items are added to the web site.