What should Plone be?

Well, plone is closer to the mark as a Content Mngmnt system than as a portal, though I see potential for both. As runyaga sez, nicely integrating with a 3rd party editor, smart version control, and a deployment tool and plone would move into the 'totally useful' catagory for normal humans (as apposed to Zope freaks ;) ). Also, there seem to be more protal and news tools already out there with fairly well organized structure and few that do content management. dot.kde.org is a fairly useable version of squishdot IMHO, so why reinvent the wheel? The ability to comment on all objects within plone could then be more narrowly focused on the smaller audience of content providers, giving them the more specialized tools and interfaces they need, as apart from the more general audience that would be attracted by a portal.

An easy to use CMS.
Main benefit might be : You install it and immediately get a working system for your company's intranet/extranet/kbase.

Where can I get the downloadable version of dot.kde.org ???

dot.kde.org is Not a wheel that was ever invented! it is a wheel that was retro-fitted and I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'm going to put that much effort into Squishdot to rework the dang thing..

think of all the upgrades a prod site has to go thru? endusers DO NOT want to fart around with their site every version release..

Why make yet another CM system? aren't there enough of them out there already? Plone _is_ on top of CMF, is it not??

I don't mind saying it over and over till I'm blue (purple whatever) in the face:

Nuke, PostNuke, Blogger, even Squishdot are not popular because they use this cool thingy or that awesome feature that only very few enlightened one can understand or even appreciate.

They are popular because pretty much ANY Joe-six-pack siteowner-wannabe can install them with minumum fuss and start tooting his/her horn!

They empower END-USERS, not massage the technical hardons of their owners/creators!

They ARE the killer apps, (yess even Squishdot, and believe me Zope needs one! a better one, maybe Plone is it!)

Make it simple/ Make it easy! If I wanted pain, I'd install some crap bloatware.. (which ARE becoming "free" as well)

Where is this CM you are speaking of, that's different than CMF anyway?

Where is this "integrated" HTML editor? I see it under the 3rd parties skin but where is the end-user access to it in the interface?

I MUST be using a different plone than is being spoken of here.

And not the kind of "out of the box" that Zope is or CMF is. They are NOT, repeat NOT out of the box.

As a dumbass enduser, this is what I'd like Plone to be:

 - One zipped bundle, no "download this, scratch your ass three times (anticlockwise), spank three monkeys on that site, piss around with that link on that site, download 4 more python modules (which require 2 each more modules), fart around with config, and voila you have a site!"

NOTE: Not saying that's what Plone is, it is BY FAR, one of the bestest looking things to come out of the woodworx after squishdot (the only under-appreciated torchbearer for Zope, if you talkin Penetration).

 - Start small, don't get caught up in all
the cool things that you can do! Scope Creep is NOT our friend!

 - Do few things, and do them SOLID!!

 - Make it easy for us stoopid people to install it (include everything needed, work out all the kinks, all dependencies, Don't leave things to me, I'm a stoopid user remember?

 - Don't give up in the middle of the project, PLEASE! this is a good thing, and all I can do is give you moral support, and tell you that you ARE fighting the good fight!

 - Make it a basic package:
   
  - basic portal pkg, where a community can thrive (ie; logins/discussions/news/search pretty much what you have now)

   - easy easy easy to use/install

   - OOTB OOTB OOTB

okay, end-RANT! simple but solid is good! OOTB is ideal! OOTB like Squishdot is/was etc etc. ... sigh!!

We are working to make it as easy as possible no, and it **will be** out-of-the-box easy. Recently added feature is a separate entry in the "Add" menu of Zope.

This means you can skip all the steps on the install page, and just choose "Add Plone Site" from the menu, fill in the details - and voil�Instant Plone Gratification� ;)

Thanks for your comments.

You guys are the bomb(S)! Plone is awesome, don't get my comments in the wrong way, I've just seen too many Zope projects get bogged down in the technicalities of things, and that is not whats going to get ZOPE the credit that it really deserves!

Plone is a step in the right ( the only?) direction!

(sorry for the Cowardly lion thingy in the previous post)

-LninYo

Content management AND Knowledge management out of the box.

discussion, workflows, rating and some feature like everything's soft links should all be there and nobody should learn yet another "assembly" language to set it up

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=soft%20link

terrific way to let ALL users add content/knowledge while navigating

i totally agree

So shouldn't you guys release a stable 1.0 version with all the current features and postpone I18N and the rating feature for 1.X ?
I think people are waiting for Plone to start using it on production sites, and they could wait for additional features to come later. The problem is if you don't do that we can try to recommend Plone 0.99 to people, but we need to tell them "In Zope development, a version number under 1 means a working version..."

Let's start selling Plone to the public !

Personally, I love tinkering around with all the quasi-stable Zope (and other open source) products out there-- but what Management wants to see is stable, usable software.

I'd rather see Plone with a limited, but stable, easy to use, feature set-- than a much more feature-rich version that has lots of quirks and instabilities.

(of course, I don't mean to suggest that further development and addition of new features should stop-- just that the current features should be polished up first so that a stable 1.0 version can be reached)

Firstly - there is a reason why we call it a version number below 1.0 - simply because Plone is not production quality yet. We need to put in all the mechanisms and fuctionality that we want in the 1.0 release first, and then declare a final release.

After that, we we probably focus on the small issues and optimizing for speed.

The basic structure for i18n **will** be in 1.0, even if we are implementing a spec that only exists in the Zope3 Wiki for now. That means Plone has the structure in place, and when ZPT starts supporting the i18n namespace, we will have instant support for it.

Ratings are already functioning in the CVS, we only need to write some wrapper code for it.

We are getting closer day by day. :)

I will try to test the CVS version ASAP.

Focus on Content Management exclusively, please! I operate a web site for a state agency with 1,200 employees. I would dearly love to be able to create, for example, templates for news releases, public notices, fact sheets, etc, and then turn over the content creation duties to the employees, with review/approval being done by management. THAT is what I need, not yet another way for members of the public to post things on our web site (i.e. another Slashdot clone). Please focus on making it easier for us to get our content out to the public, not the other way around.

I couldn't agree more with this. I'm not quite sure where the emphasis on portal-type Zope sites came from in the first place (maybe to make it easier to create new son-of-the-daughter-of-Zope-Newbies-type sites), but in any case my unsubstantiated hunch is that most folks looking for content management aren't looking to create a portal, they're looking for a tool to manage content on a site with several <B>internal</b> stakeholders. I'd love to see Plone focus on that sort of workflow and content management functionality.

There are loads of portals out there already. The addition of another is no real benifit.

I have yet to find a truly open CMS that is well documented and easy to use. I can only urge the Plone dev team to consider developing it into a mature CMS.

Everything you are referring to is in Zope and CMF (caveat: if you dig through the skin's code). Just edit the header and change the code that displays the join/login menu so it doesn't display for the public but does display for your internal IP's.

Install CMFArticles. Modify the skin code to look the way you like.

Then you have accounts for employees to add content that is displayed to the public.

It looks like a portal OOTB but it's easily modified (CMF that is) to do what you want.

I don't get this? I've checked out plone and don't see the "CMS" you're talking about. All I see is a take-off of a CMF site that breaks most of my applications. I downloaded plone after doing a search for skins on CMF dogbowl.

It's a damned good looking skin but that's it. I have yet to see any CMS functionality that isn't already in CMF and Zope. It looks to me like you are trying to strip funtionality from Zope and CMF in order to go backward to a more HTML oriented application while taking advantage of the same functionality you're stripping away.

In order to create the CMS you seem to be talking about, plone would have to exist on the "manage" side which is where content managment exists in Zope.

In order NOT to be considered a portal you should remove the login, join, calendar, hell... all of it.

Maybe I'm way off base here. You go to a site such as http://www.f5.com and explain to me how plone (a CMS) gives me the ability to create or manage a site like that and I'll be able to think of it as a CMS. Otherwise it's just a CMF copycat with a great skin, which isn't CMF compliant.

You want to focus on one thing and do it well? Focus on making plone a skinning arcitecture within a standard CMF site. Put in some back side functionality to modify layout and call dtml methods via the properties page or something similar. I think it's pretty ignorant that after all these years I still have to sift through the code in a chain of documents to find the method, or in plone's case the reference to change an image like the logo, instead of specifying it in a properties page.

If I had the time I'd write it up myself.

It almost looks like you are trying to create a proprietary product to sell and are using the open source/zope community to beta test and improve it for you before you lock it down and start charging money for it. Why else would you cripple functionality in it?

A bit harsh? Perhaps. Only because in your posting you talk about Zope not being focused, basically, and that being it's down fall. Zope is focussed. It's people that make new packages to run on zope that make it appear that way. People like you as a matter of fact. Instead of improving on the existing CMF you are recreating it according to your own oppinion of what it should be, which seems to be html oriented which is completely against what Zope was designed for.

DTML was used in Zope to make up for the short commings of HTML server-side parsing and then people like you come along and create a package that makes Zope more HTML friendly. Does this make sense?!?

Zope was intended to be a base platform for people to easily build applications on. Which is what you've done.

Keep it in perspective while you decide what Plone should be.

Just so it's not all negative let me tell you tha I think you have a great looking portal skin.

Later

be more creative. Plone is *obviously* a CMS.

bly me! I thought plone was just a skin on top of cmf. which of course is striving to be a CMS, so essentially plone IS the CMF!

What Zope Corp should do is ditch the shitty interface for CMF and adopt plone and concentrate their efforts on making the thing usable.

Microsoft gets it (however bad they are!) why can't Zope Corp get it? YOU NEED A BASE, a critical mass! you can't put your consulting dollars...

change your business model if you have to! or you will die!

I am thankful that these guys created Plone, whatever it is, its way better looking than CMF. I hope by version 2 we will get to easy customization via templates (and not via code mods)

my 2c worth!

LninYo

Zope Corp should concentrate on plumbing. The community can concentrate on Usability and Examples. There is still lots of plumbing that is missing from CMF. ZC and community should look into how we can handle versionings and a 'composite content' API.

Then after all of that is bug free we can talk about putting it all together. ZC is running a business. They have their own approach. The communtiy has its own approach. We have the CMF in common. CMF needs to be better off. Make documents and HOWTO's on devshed if you want to get more people to use Plone + CMF.

In the main news window, I see that there are 19 answers to this item, but somehow the replies after a certain level are "lost". I'm sure they are there, but they just don't show up.

I think the boxes are really nice, but if they take away from the purpose of a threaded discussion? Are they really that necessary?

I'd like to see where all the new replies are.

comments are seriously broke. they will be fixed for 1.0

I installed it, and didn't know how to fuckin' run the damn thing.

it's massively powerful Content Management Framework. The problem with Zope is:

* it is harder to install than it should be (packaging helps - rpms or windoze packaging)

* people don't know what it is (!! really !!)

* it doesn't TOTALLY excel in one feature area (here is where Zope based projects have to take up the challenge with applications)

I think Zope and a well designed CMF application should be able to be installed and within 5 minutes out of the box be as good as Tomoye's Simplify application (see www.tomoye.com) - and do that for free. Then providers can add sophisticated services on top and sell Plone/Zope services and installation and support for reasonable fees (e.g. information management eg: "Roll back page/file/object/whole portal to previous state and unwind changes to current version"; "animate the community with sophisticated marketing" ; "support services for multimedia and telephony addons"; "24/7 backup and replication, remote admin and repair of broken Data.fs etc"). Simplify is the one application now able to *radically undersell* the ridiculously overpriced commerical portals, but IMHO is itself still too expensive.

Here's a typical topic page from a Simplify site ... it is very good at providing flexible "Taxonomies" for organizing content - totally driven by the various levels or editors and users of the site. Zope's ACL and fine grained inheritance should be able to blow this PHP based sloutions out of the water!

http://www.tomoye.com/simpl[…]N=201&reload=1021133587

<p>
I see absolutely nothing in that system that can not be done with Plone/CMF. Have you looked at Topics? I am getting to the point where I am <strong>absolutely</strong> convinced people do not understand how to use CMF. And this is OK. I am picking a paradigm that I do presentations with and explain how-to use CMF using the traditional Content Management paradigm. Especially with the landing of proper Version Control a few days ago in cvs.zope.org. You can revert object heirarchies back to versions using this component. </p>
<p>
Again I am going to focus typically on CMS. CMFs original intent was to focus on 'communities' and if you want to do that with Plone - we are willing to accept patches. None of this stuff is mutually exclusive. If you can make it to the next Open Source Content Management System conference - I vow to be there and explain my approaches. Maybe by then I will have had to do community sites. </p>
<br />
~runyaga

This is totally true! Most people DO NOT "get" the CMF! (and I count myself in that group as well) What Plone is accomplishing, thru the efforts of its development team, is bridging that gap.

I have been following plone from month 1, if not day 1, and the thing is picking up steam! I can see it! Lets create a separate discussion section, I think that will help foster a sense of community. I can understand that you guys (the Plone Team) don't want to be inundated by simple queries, but maybe some of the other users can help out in the not so complicated issues department. We would also be creating a running knowledgebase rooted in Plone itself!

CMF needs a serious introduction! and we will do what we can, but the technical nature of the subject narrows the field to very few.

Thanks,

LninYo

Let's look back a little, shall we? The CMF was born the PTK, Portal Tool Kit. This is sort of a shame because I've never seen or heard anyone provide a decent definition of a portal. It all seems to boil down to "a big, complicated web site." Since that definition sucks, here are a few things I think portals **can** include:

* Personalized content

* Discussion Boards / Live Chat

* User Publishing areas

* "Bouncy" content - links, search, etc..

I'm coming from the perspective of someone who wants to build a portal. I've used Zope (think DTML) to build a small website that functions nicely, but I'd never be able to use it to build, say, Yahoo.

I looked at the PTK when it was the PTK, and thought, "What the hell is that?" Then, the word on PTK became, "Wait until it's the CMF," so I waited.

Plone is the first thing that looks like it adds up to a real Portal Tool Kit under Zope. So please, please, make Plone a Portal builder, which is what it seemed to be at the beginning. Now, of course, any portal kit has to include some degree of Content Management, so perhaps those looking for a CMS would be happy, too, if Plone became a portal tool.

Thanks for the great work, and I look forward to Plone's future, whatever you may decide that is.

There seems to be disagreement about what plone is and what it should be. That's probably because as a site, plone.org is confusing to use.

CMS, portal, whatever you want to call it, I don't think they are incompatible terms. I spent a year managing a CMS/portal using ATG Dynamo for a large Web company and for the past year I've put together sites using custom PHP and postnuke. I think I have a decent idea what this kind of software needs to help a site become successful.

Here's my short list:

1. Flexible content types: Data (content) structured into different types such as article, faq, glossary, web link. The data within these types have a logical structure. This structure should be extensible � be able to add fields relevant to the publisher.

2. Flexible taxonomy: High volumes of content, regardless of what it is, must ultimately be categorized to be useable. Category hierarchies should be extensible and flexible. Content can be associated to these categories with metadata. This is handled very poorly by most open source CMS systems.

3. User submission tools: Message boards, article submission (or any other type submissions). These records should be public and/or private, and tie back into the user db.

4. Centralized user db: I like Postnuke�s way of handling this. The core user db is appended by different functionality modules but the core db remains intact. This way people can build out sites with as much or as little functionality as they want without reconfiguring the user records (which in time become extremely valuable).

5. Workflow/Permissions. Make permission control granular, with easy administration. Content Submission -> Approval -> Publication cycle should be relatively simple and not require too much work or experience. (I used Interwoven Teamsite, and for all it�s functionality and controls, only the simplest settings were ever used)

If you can develop this framework, the bells and whistles will come in time. People will want to add functionality to a solid framework like this.

It looks like some of the things I described is in Plone already. but it is difficult to understand how they work together.

I do know that Plone looks good, but once you poke around, the interface is becomes less intuitive.