Plone 4 Reaches Release Candidate Status

The first release candidate of Plone 4.0 is now available.

The Plone 4.0 Framework Team and release manager Eric Steele are pleased to announce the first release candidate for Plone 4.0.

Plone 4.0 brings massive performance and scalability improvements, a brand new default theme and a revamped user interface.

Other new features include:

  • An improved first-run experience, particularly creating a new Plone site
  • Streamlined user account creation and extensible member profiles
  • Upgraded infrastructure: Plone now runs on Python 2.6 and Zope 2.12 making for easier deployment and a smaller memory footprint

  • Built-in file-system storage for Image and File content types makes databases with large binaries easier to manage


  • Pop-up forms for login and many management functions
  • TinyMCE visual editor improves formatted text editing
  • Full-text indexing of East Asian languages
  • Group dashboards
  • The new standard theme utilizes a flexible, grid-based layout that provides a better base for clean, modern theming
  • Hundreds of bug fixes and tweaks
  • A well-tested upgrader that makes upgrading from Plone 3 fast and easy
  • Performance increases that nearly double pages per second in typical situations.

How you can help

Release candidates serve as proposed final releases for the project.  While Plone 4.0 has been tested by many members of the Plone developer community, and is already running in production on a number of sites, it needs wider testing to flush out any remaining critical bugs before we can stamp it as a "final release."  And that's where we need you.

Here's what you can do to help:

  1. Test our installer packages by downloading and installing Plone 4.0 RC1 from the Plone 4.0 downloads page.
  2. Help us test the upgrade scripts by migrating a copy of your site's data.
  3. Report any errors to the Plone bug tracker.