This Month in Plone - October 2010

The Latest Highlights and News from the Plone Community.

Talks Announced for Plone Conference 2010 in Bristol, UK


Over 400 attendees are expected to meet at the 8th annual Plone Conference for a week-long programme of training, talks and developer sprints from the 25th to 31st October at the Thistle Grand Hotel in Bristol, UK.  Registration is now open.

Plone, an Open Source Content Management System used throughout the world has a massive following and Plone events are held around the globe. The largest of these is the annual Plone Conference and this year will be held in the UK. Plone is used for developing websites, intranet and portals for corporations, NGOs and the public sector.

Organised by Netsight Internet Solutions, it promises to bring together developers, designers, end users and business people. This year an additional event is being planned as a one-day mini-conference on the 26th October called "Plone in Business" which will be aimed specifically at analysts, advisors, evaluators and information professionals looking to find out more about Plone and see a showcase of successful Plone projects from across the sectors. It will also see the launch of the JBoye Plone Community of Practice.

The main part of the conference, from the 27th - 29th October, has over 50 scheduled talks from speakers from 19 countries and includes an 'unconference' day in which talks will be proposed by the attendees.

Plone Conference 2010 scheduled talks include:

* Easier and faster Plone theming with Deliverance
* Design and Development with Dexterity
* Enterprise Search in Plone with Solr
* Boosting productivity with "Plone-driven Plone development"
* Brasil.gov.br: Building a digital nation with Plone

For a full list of talks, visit - http://www.ploneconf2010.org/the-event/talks

Alan Runyan, co-founder of Plone and president of Enfold Systems along with Alex Limi, fellow co-founder of Plone and now Firefox User Experience Lead at Mozilla will be delivering a keynote. There will also be a guest keynote by Richard Noble, OBE, project director of the Bloodhound SSC project attempting be build a car to pass the 1,000mph land speed mark.

The conference falls at a great time, with the recent release of Plone 4, a product that raises the bar in the Content Management System market with a faster, more user-friendly and more refined version of the product.

So far, registrations for the conference have come from over 30 countries around the world. To find out more about the conference and to register, visit http://ploneconf2010.org.

Plone Foundation Announces New Members


Congratulations to Tom Lazar, Mikko Ohtamaa, Wyn Williams, Ricardo Alves and Erico Andrei.  They are the newest members of the Plone Foundation.

The group of five new members were confirmed at the Foundation Board's first meeting in October, chosen from the 11 applications the Membership Committee received for consideration.  The Plone Foundation selects as members individuals who have made significant, enduring contributions that benefit the general Plone community.

The Membership Committee is Steve McMahon, Godefroid Chapelle, Chris Calloway, Hanno Schlichting, JoAnna Springsteen & Matthew Wilkes.

Plone 4 CMS Unveiled: Advancing Power, Performance & User Experience


The Plone community has raised the bar in the Content Management System market with today's release of Plone 4, a faster, more user-friendly and more refined version of a product which has set the pace for CMS innovation for nearly a decade.  Plone 4 delivers big improvements in raw speed, scalability and ease of use, and continues to advance its hallmark strengths of unmatched security, superior user interface, ease of installation and a beautiful out-of-the-box experience.

"Plone 4 is based on the most-frequently requested features and improvements from Plone's worldwide user and developer community," says Plone co-founder and Firefox User Experience Lead Alexander Limi. "Our developers and users asked for better performance - Plone 4 is much faster, requires less memory, and performs well even when serving up massive files. They also didn't want us to sacrifice what we do well to get there - and we haven't. Plone 4 is not just more powerful - it continues to improve in areas Plone has always been known for: usability, security, and a CMS that is easy to install, upgrade, and looks great right out of the box."

Looking back on the nine year evolution of Plone and the community that supports it, Limi is more than pleased. "It's gotten to be a lot bigger than I thought it could be. Sometimes we forget how many people are involved with Plone, and how many people have left behind PHP and Java to create successful businesses based around Plone."

Geir Baekholt, President of the Plone Foundation, has a similar reaction. "I'm impressed with how professional, mature and focused the Plone community is. It's rare in open source to see so many companies operating to such high standards, treating their customers and employees well and running their businesses in a sustainable manner.  The best thing about Plone is that we have so many mature, stable companies using it who are consummate professionals at what they do."

For all its technical and visual improvements, one of Plone 4's most important roles is to build the under-the-hood foundation even more exciting improvements in Plone 5.  It gives developers and users innovations they can use today, while allowing them to develop products and websites that will be ready to take full advantage of future Plone releases.

The list of notable changes in Plone 4 includes:

  •  Significant performance improvements
  •  New theme
  •  Search and indexing improvements
  •  Group Dashboards for a Customized User Experience
  •  Massively improved handling of large files & media
  •  New, faster folder implementation
  •  More powerful management of users and groups
  •  Dynamic forms framework based on jQuery Tools
  •  Improved first-run experience
  •  Smooth upgrade experience
  •  Reduced memory footprint
  •  Upgraded infrastructure


You can find out more about these new features than you would ever want to by visiting http://plone.org/4.

Plone Deployment Workshop 2010 Returns to Indianapolis November 11-12

 
Six Feet Up has announced the return of its Plone Deployment Workshop this Fall at the Omni Severin. The workshop offers the opportunity to delve into the details of how to follow egg-based release practices for successful deployments.

The workshop will offer two tracks for different audiences.  Both tracks will cover how to successfully deploy Plone, with one as a more hands-on experience for system administrators who would like to gain a more in-depth understanding of Plone management.  The second track will offer a higher-level understanding of how to manage a successful deployment.

Some of the talks will include:

* Buildout for the Future by Clayton Parker
* Caching by Ricardo Newbery
* Supervisor  by Chris McDonough
* Scaling and system management  by Elizabeth Leddy
* We will also have talks by our own staff on ldap integration, relStorage, Zenoss, memmon and more.

GUEST SPEAKERS

Elizabeth Leddy, Plone enthusiast, will focus on scalability and performance during her presentation at the Plone Deployment Workshop.  With over seven years of development and deployment of applications with Python platforms, she has been instrumental in the expansion of Plone as a leading Content Management System.   Her passion for scaling and system management comes from her own experience in a variety of industries.  She currently is a consultant in San Francisco.

Chris McDonough is the primary author of the repoze.bfg web application framework and the author of the book "The repoze.bfg Web Application Framework". He is a Python developer and consultant for Agendaless Consulting, a company based in Fredericksburg, VA, USA. His other major projects include Supervisor, a Python process management system.

Ricardo Newbery is a former physics researcher and instructor who now spends much of the time developing applications and troubleshooting issues for people who need robust high performance web content management solutions. Mr. Newbery is a contributor to the Plone CMS project and the release manager for plone.app., plone., z3c., plone.cachepurging, plone.recipe.squid, and the CacheFu collection of products.

For more information or to sign up, visit - http://www.sixfeetup.com/news/plone-deployment-workshop-2010

 

Plone 3.3 Site Administration


This book for administrators was written by Alex Clark, a member of the plone.org infrastructure team, Plone Foundation Member and leader of the Washington DC Zope/Python Users Group.  It provides a solid introduction to administering Plone-based websites and covers the subject in an easy to follow, step by step manner.

What this book covers:

  • The basics of Plone site administration
  • Installing Python, Distribute, Buildout, PIP, Plone, and more
  • Changing the appearance of your Plone site with freely available, professional-looking themes
  • Automating maintenance tasks to keep your site running smoothly with less effort
  • Securing, backing up, and monitoring your Plone site
  • Maximizing the performance of your Plone site by applying various site optimization techniques


This book is designed for site administrators, webmasters, or content editors managing a site with Plone who have some Plone background, but are new to site administration. The reader is also expected to know basic Python programming.

Plone 3.3 Site Administration is available in both print and electronic forms from Packt Publishing.

 

A User's Guide to Plone


The latest edition, for Plone 4, is 246 pages, has undergone a major rewrite and includes new material on topics such as: using the TinyMCE editor, using Plone for wikis and making content easy to find.  This volume focuses on how to use "out of the box" features preinstalled with any default Plone installation. It is written especially for those who use Plone on a daily basis to write and approve content.

Available on Amazon in Print:
 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615404626
 Also available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de

Available as PDF download:
 http://www.enfoldsystems.com/support/a-users-guide-to-plone.html
 Free PDF versions for the Plone 2/3 series also available.

Introducing Plone.org's New "Downloads" Section: Comments, Ratings, Screenshots and More!


Plone.org's "downloads" section has gotten a major facelift, and now includes community product ratings, comments on products, screenshots and many other improvements.

The Plone.org team is proud to unveil a long-awaited overhaul to Plone.org's "downloads" section which houses Plone's many add-on products.  Thanks to some fantastic work from Elizabeth Leddy, Alec Mitchell, Alex Clark and participants at the recent LA Plone Sprint, Plone.org now features:

Community ratings of add-on products. Plone.org users can now rate add-on products, and search listings are now sortable by product ratings.  This will help users quickly find the products that the Plone community likes best.  Product authors will also benefit from the quick and easy feedback mechanism.

Comments on products. Plone.org now enables comments on products from logged-in users.  This enables another channel for community feedback on a product.   Please use it to review the product.   Bug reports should continue to go to the product issue trackers and support questions should generally go to the plone-users list.

Screenshots with lightbox popups = a theme gallery! Plone.org now displays front-and-center screenshots in product listings when the product author provides them.  Screenshots have slick lightbox-style popups which is especially useful for getting a preview of theme products. 

Downloads organized by product, rather than by release. The Plone.org downloads section is now organized by add-on product, rather than by individual product releases.  This produces much more intuitively-organized product listings, especially for products that are making frequent releases.

Plone version compatibility is front-and-center. Plone product listings now show Plone version compatibility right up front, this makes finding add-on products for your version of Plone quick and easy.

At-a-glance compatibility and status matrix for all product releases. Each product detail page now includes a new compatibility and status matrix that summarizes the status (alpha, beta, final) version compatibility and summary information for each product release.

Please take a few moments to explore the new http://plone.org/products, rate your favorite products, leave a comment or two and of course let us know if you run into any problems with the new downloads section.  Big thanks to Elizabeth, Alec, Alex, and the LA Plone Sprinters for some fantastic work that will touch everyone who uses Plone.

Demo Site Lets Users Preview Plone 4 Features online


A demonstration site has been set up to allow users to preview Plone 4. The demonstration site lets users experience the look and feel of Plone 4 as well as check out its ease of  use and new features. Its a great tool for demonstrating Plone 4 without needing to do a local installation and for folks to look at the changes since Plone 3.  The site lets users log in using a variety of roles so they can see the difference between what users, editor and administrators see when working in Plone 4.

You can access the demo site at http://demo.plone.org .

New Site Spotlight


Library of Bergen, Norway's Second Largest Library recently launched a brand new Plone-based website created by Jarn.  In addition to an awesome visual design, the site also serves as a showcase of Plone's newest technologies and Web 2.0 / Social Media integration.

The Bergen site was themed with XDV, as opposed to regular old style Plone themes. Using XDV made us also able to integrate/theme the library's existing library-management-system without touching the system itself.  So even when users are using the existing PHP infrastructure they don't notice that they are viewing a different system at all. Al library operations like reserving books, extending loans, searching for books, etc seem to be going through one website.  A good example of this is the XDV-themed search, which can be seen here. 

You can visit the site at http://bergenbibliotek.no/