plone.org reorganizes and launches demo.plone.org

plone.org does a gradual reorganization to remove crufty data and introduces demo.plone.org, a site that contains the latest version of Plone with a lot of third-party products installed.

Introduction We are about to do a reorganization of plone.org to streamline the content generation process and split the test users from the contributing users. Rationale Mixing random content with the real content on plone.org has some bad implications. - database bloat - poor searchability - a lot of inactive users So, to address these concerns, we have set up a separate site you can use for testing: "demo.plone.org":http://demo.plone.org. (Hosted by "Ingeniweb":http://www.ingeniweb.com - big thanks to them for volunteering to do this.) This does not mean that you will not be able to get your own account on plone.org, quite the opposite - but we want to separate the test users from the ones actively contributing content and products to plone.org. Getting rid of Member folders In addition, we want to get rid of the Member folders. We do this because content in Member folders has a few fundamental problems in our case: - Poor discoverability (you need an explicit pointer to the content, you don't just find it on your own) - Lots of outdated information as a result of the above (look to the current zope.org to see just how bad this problem gets) We want to encourage content generation in the relevant areas - all the documentation should be in the docs area and in wikis, and all the product releases should be in the product section. Summary In summary, the following will happen: - After this announcement, you have two weeks to log in to keep your account. Don't log in if you were just testing out Plone or if you don't plan on being a documentation or product contributor. You can always sign up later if you should change your mind. (Please note that you need to explicitly log in, so if you are already logged in when accessing plone.org, you need to log out and then log back in.) - You should move the content away from your home folder. For those of you who are hosting documentation or products on plone.org, contact us, and we will help with giving them new homes in the relevant sections on plone.org. - After two weeks have passed, we will delete all member areas and the inactive users. - We keep backups of old user accounts and member areas for a month or two, just in case somebody actually had useful content there. Starting today - Sunday 23th March 02:00 CET, members will not get home folders, but will have to put their content in specific areas of the site. The documentation area will have a totally open wiki where anybody can contribute documentation, and the different wikis will have people responsible for keeping the content structured. People are our greatest asset, you can never solve the content management problem with software only. In addition, you should be able to automatically create a Software release in the Product section, and keep the relevant information there. In a transition period, you will have to contact us to get these permissions, until the proper Products area is up and running. Thank you for your cooperation, this initiative will lead to better information management on plone.org, and make it easier for you to find the information, documentation and products you are looking for - and we think it's worth a little change in site policies. On behalf of the Plone Team, Alexander Limi - Co-founder, Plone