Google Summer of Code 2025 Guidelines and Project Ideas

Project ideas are proposed by mentors from the Plone organization, not potential contributors. The Plone organization was accepted to participate in GSoC on February 27, 2025. Potential contributors should discuss ideas (see below section) in the Community Forum's Google Summer of Code category. See the Google Summer of Code 2025 Timeline.

Plone Google Summer of Code guidelines

The Plone Foundation has been a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code program for many years. It is great to have students working on Plone and related projects during the summer. It has brought many new contributors to the community.

Since a few years ago, the number of candidates has been significantly growing, and we are very happy about that. However, the amount of candidates is not easy to manage for us as a community. Please remember, Plone mentors and community members are all unpaid volunteers.

The following dos and don'ts for the GSoC candidates are a guide to help them get started with Plone, and to help us manage the number of candidates.

Don't create issues, pull requests, or comments in GitHub

GitHub is used by contributors who use Plone for their work. GitHub is not a place for GSoC candidates to ask for guidance, help, or support. GSoC candidates should not create pull requests, issues, or comments.

Don't request to ask to become a member of the Plone GitHub organization. You will become one only if your GSoC project is accepted.

Doing any of the above actions may result in your suspension or banishment from the Plone GitHub organization. Additionally, it will prevent you from being selected to participate in GSoC.

Don't contact individuals

Please don't contact us individually via chat, private message, email, or any other account or social media service. Doing so will prevent you from being selected to participate in GSoC.

Don't be disrespectful

Candidates must treat other developers and GSOC mentors with respect, both in text and communication. Disrespect will prevent you from being selected to participate in GSoC.

Do watch this page for updates

This page is the authoritative source for everything to do with GSoC. Check back often.

Do your reading and research first

Please ensure that you have reviewed our training and documentation.

Doing so should answer most of your questions on how to install, use, and develop Plone.

Do learn about Plone

Plone is a complex system, and it is not easy to get started with it. We expect that you have started to learn about Plone before applying.

The best way to learn about Plone is to follow our online trainings and our documentation.

Do use our community forum

If, after you have reviewed our training and documentation, you have questions, use our community forum's search feature to check if your question has already been answered.

If your question has not yet been answered or you require further clarification, ask in the community forum.

If you have technical questions, such as running into a problem installing Plone, read our guidelines on how to ask for help.

You are welcome to ask questions about the GSoC projects on their dedicated threads. You can propose your own ideas in new threads.

When you post to the forum, use the category "Google Summer of Code".

Do focus on your application

The primary criteria for selection to GSoC is the quality of your application. Make your application stand out by showing that you have learned about Plone and that you have a good understanding of the project you are applying for.

Don't use artificial intelligence (AI) to generate your application. We can tell the difference between thoughtful and AI-generated applications. We will throw away AI applications.

The GSoC contributor application period will start on March 24, 2025.

Ideas

Note: This is a draft list, the ideas listed here will be refined and detailed in the coming days, and we might add new ones too.

Volto themes

Skills: React

The objective of this project is to create new ready-to-use Volto themes.

Size: 175

Rating: intermediate

Possible mentors: Rafael, E.S. Tyrer

Expected outcome: Volto themes and documentation

Workflow manager for Volto

Skills: React and Python

Size: 350

Rating: hard

Possible mentors: Rafael, E.S. Tyrer

Expected outcome: a working Plone add-on implementing the feature, with tests and documentation.

Update pas.plugins.authomatic to the current state of different providers

Skills: React, Python

Size: 175

Rating: intermediate

Possible mentor: Jens W. Klein

Expected outcome: a working Plone add-on implementing the feature, with tests and documentation.

Repeater block

Skills: React, Python

The ability to reuse blocks types as the items in a listing to make listings more powerful. e.g. teaser listing, image listing etc.

In addition the ability to have sources plugins so listings can be other kinds of data not just plone search, for example social media posts, RSS feeds, related/recommended items to this content or links to search pages with different facets preselected.

Size: 175

Rating: intermediate

Possible mentors: Rafael, E.S. Tyrer