Plone: an elephant metamorphosis tool

more than 65000 potential user, 100 editors and a large number and variety of services for different types of users. More than 60 departments, 15 faculties, 60000 students, 1700 employees and 2000 teachers: this is the University of Bari, one of the biggest educational institution in Italy. And this is the reason for which the University decided to invest in web technology to provide and integrate services for all types of university users. This process starts from an old static website of thousands of html pages in a situation of strong constraints of costs reduction and needs of efficiency and effectiveness increasing. Every department/faculty had its own site, in own way and own style. The challenge: the use of efficient technology simple to learn and flexible for all. We have build the new portal of our University using Zope/Plone with the aim to transform the elephant in a fast gazelle. In this session we present this experience from the begin to end: to convince the bosses, learn Plone, customize Plone, to pattern the information, training the users and, finally, organize the cluster. This talk is aimed to users with a basic knowledge of Zope/Plone and "CMS evangelist".