Jan. 24, 2005. A presentation about Plone given at the CMS Series, a bi-monthly gathering of technical professionals serving the Boston non-profit community. Sponsored by Organizers' Collaborative (http://www.organizenow.net)

1. Introduction to Plone
Organizers’ Collaborative
CMS Series
Jan. 24, 2005
Nate Aune, IT Consultant
natea@jazkarta.com
Jazkarta - www.jazkarta.com

2. Who is this guy?
• B.A. Computer Science & Music Minor,
Pacific Lutheran University (1991-94)
• Study abroad and work in Copenhagen, Denmark (1994-97)
• Studied Jazz Performance & Composition,
Berklee College of Music (1997-99)
• Founded Jazkarta Consulting in New York City (2001)
• IT Director for Learning Lab Denmark (2002-2004)
• Founded Plone4Artists project (2003)
• Self-employed consultant - Jazkarta.com (2004-Present)
www.jazkarta.com

3. Agenda
• What is Plone?
• Who is using Plone?
• Why Plone?
• What about support?
• And hosting?
• What can Plone do? Demo
• Questions & discussion
www.jazkarta.com

4. What is Plone?
• open source content management system
(CMS)
• freely downloadable software under the
GPL license
• built by an international community of
friendly developers
• not owned by any single company (like
Linux)
www.jazkarta.com

5. Who uses Plone?
• Oxfam America
• US Aid
• United Nations
• National Health Services (UK)
• Open Source Development Labs
• Omidyar Network
• Greenpeace
• NASA Jet Propulsion Labs (Mars Rover site)
www.jazkarta.com

6. Oxfam America
www.oxfamamerica.org
www.jazkarta.com

7. National Health Services (UK)
www.npfit.nhs.uk
Text
www.jazkarta.com

8. International Open Source Network
www.iosn.net
www.jazkarta.com

9. Omidyar Network
www.omidyar.net/home
www.jazkarta.com

10. Open Source Development Lab
www.osdl.org
www.jazkarta.com

11. Street Football World
www.streetfootballworld.org
This website is an interactive and participative communication and cooperation platform for sharing good practice and
global networking for football based social projects and initiatives. These projects primarily target less privileged,
impoverished, poorly educated, war-torn and conflicting people and regions with the aim of promoting peaceful conflict
resolution, non-formal education, crime reduction, social integration and health prevention - using football as the main
tool and common language!
This platform represents a global community of these football projects, built on the principles of diversity, sustainability
and inclusiveness.
www.jazkarta.com

12. Ubuntu Linux
www.ubuntulinux.org
www.jazkarta.com

13. Learning Lab Denmark
www.lld.dk
www.jazkarta.com

14. VoteWatch
www.votewatch.us
www.jazkarta.com

15. Greenpeace Cyberactivist Community
act.greenpeace.org
www.jazkarta.com

16. Public Knowledge
www.publicknowledge.org
www.jazkarta.com

17. Human Rights Network
www.humanrights.net.nz
www.jazkarta.com

18. Why Plone?
• Basic content management features built-in
• Workflow tool
• 100+ add-on products (most are open
source and freely downloadable)
• Rich services such as full-text searching and
indexing and syndication
www.jazkarta.com

19. Why Plone? (2)
• Designer friendly
• Easy to use
• Accessibility
• Modular
• Scalable
• Multilingual
www.jazkarta.com

20. Plone = designer friendly
• Fully-validated
XHTML templates
• Much can be
changed with just
CSS
• Designers and
coders can work
simultaneously
without stepping on
each others’ toes
www.jazkarta.com

21. www.jazkarta.com

22. Plone = easy to use
• Strong focus on end-user
usability
• Most users need minimal to
no training
• Drag-n-drop uploading of
content
www.jazkarta.com

23. Plone = accessibility
• Carefully follows standards
for accessibility
• Fully compliant with text
browsers and screen
readers
• Plone pages are compliant Mrs. Habisch, from Vorarlberger
with US Section 508, and Association of the Blind and Visually
Impaired, using Plone with a braille
the W3C’s AA rating for reader
accessibility
www.jazkarta.com

24. Plone = modular
• Start simple and build on top of a solid
foundation
• Add/remove plug-ins with one click
• Extensible as your needs grow
www.jazkarta.com

25. www.jazkarta.com

26. Plone = scalable
• Apache
• ZEO
• pound
• Squid
www.jazkarta.com

27. Plone = multilingual
• Internationalization of UI
and content
• Translated out-of-the-
box into 40+ languages,
more than any other
CMS
• Supports right-to-left
languages such as
Hebrew, Arabic
www.jazkarta.com

28. www.jazkarta.com

29. ZopeChina.com
(in English)
www.jazkarta.com

30. ZopeChina.com
(in Chinese)
www.jazkarta.com

31. www.jazkarta.com

32. www.jazkarta.com

33. www.jazkarta.com

34. What about support?
• Free support
• Commercial support
www.jazkarta.com

35. Free support
• Online support from
worldwide community
• Mailing lists / newsgroups
(50 msgs/day)
• plone.user, plone.devel, plone.design,
plone.archetypes, plone.documentation
• IRC - internet relay chat
(120 users)
• #plone, #archetypes, #plonedesign on
irc.freenode.net
www.jazkarta.com

36. Commercial Support
• 120+ Plone/Zope solution
providers listed on
www.opensourcexperts.com
• 190+ Plone/Zope solution
providers listed on
www.zope.org/Resources/ZSP
www.jazkarta.com

37. Books
• Definitive Guide to Plone
Andy McKay, APress
• FREE online version: www.jazkarta.com/technology/plone/plonebook
• Building Websites with Plone
J. Cameron Cooper, Packt Publishing
• Plone Content Management Essentials
Julie Meloni, SAMS
www.jazkarta.com

38. www.jazkarta.com

39. Hosting
• Self-hosting
• Free hosting
• Commercial hosting
www.jazkarta.com

40. Self-hosting
• Point-n-click
installers for
Windows & OS X
• Step-by-step
instructions for
installing on Linux,
FreeBSD
• Zope has built-in
Web, FTP, WebDAV
server
www.jazkarta.com

41. Free Hosting
• Objectis -
www.objectis.org
• Ingenihosting -
www.ingenihosting.com
www.jazkarta.com

42. Commercial hosting
• Zettai - www.zettai.net
• iMeme - www.imeme.net
• Nidelven - www.nidelven-it.no/hosting
• Interlix - www.interlix.com
www.jazkarta.com

43. What can Plone do? Communication & Collaboration
Zope System admin
* Mailing lists (Mailboxer, PloneMailboxer)
* One file to backup: Data.fs (ZODB) using the included repozo.py script
* Discussion boards (CMFBoard, Ploneboard)
* Scalability (ZEO, pound)
* Newsletter tools (PloneGazette, CMFNewsletter, PloneNewsletter)
* Workgroups (mxmWorkGroups, GrufSpaces)
Plone webmaster tasks
* Wiki (ZWiki)
* Installing products (QuickInstaller)
* Blogging (SimpleBlog, Quills, COREBlog)
* Users/group management (GroupUserFolder, CMFMember)
* Chat (PloneChat)
* Adding portlets (PlonePortlets)
* Instant Messaging (PloneIM, CMFMessage)
* Changing colors (CSSManager)
* Contacts directory (PloneContacts)
Editing content
Resources
* WYSIWYG editor in browser (Kupu, Epoz)
* Book library (ATAmazon)
* Using a desktop application (ExternalEditor)
* Links (ATBookmarks, CMFLinkChecker)
* Using WebDAV share (Novell Netdrive Windows, Goliath OS X, MacOS X)
* RSS news feeds from other sites (CMFSin, CMFFeed)
* Inserting images on a page (PloneArticle, RichDocument)
* Open Office documents (CMFOODocument)
* Aggregating content on pages
o ListingPages, CompositePack, CMFContentPanels, mxmDynamicPage
Multimedia
* Photos (CMFPhoto, ZPhotoSlides)
Syndicating your site content
* Audio (ATAudio)
* RSS 2.0 & MP3 enclosures i.e. Podcasting (qRSS2Syndication)
* Video (lilix.movie, PloneRailroad)
* Atomz (PloneAtom)
* Flash (CMFFlashFile)
Calendaring
Searching
* Events listing (CMFCalendar)
* Search other sites (PloneSearchBox)
* Calendar of events (CalendarX)
* Search other Plone sites (PloneRSSSearch)
* Calendars published from iCal, Mozilla Calendar
* Full-text indexing of Word, PDF docs (TextIndexNG, AttachmentField)
o Calendaring, PloneiCalendar, iCalendar
* Immediate search results as you type (LiveSearch)
* Optimization for search engines (RobotsExclusionTool, qSEOptimizer)
Creative Commons Licensing (PloneCC)
Multilingual
Reporting (CMFReportTool, ReportLab)
* User interface in 40+ languages (PloneTranslations, PlacelessTranslationService)
E-Commerce
* Multilingual content (LinguaPlone)
* PloneMall
* ZWarehouse
Authentication
* PlonePayPal
* LDAP (LDAPUserFolder)
* MySQL (MySQLUserFolder)
Polls/Surveys
* Extensible (PluggableUserFolder)
* PlonePopoll, MPoll, CMFQuestions
http://www.jazkarta.com/ploneproducts
www.jazkarta.com

44. Thank you!
• Demo
• Questions?
• Discussion
PDF version of these slides available at:
www.jazkarta.com/intro-to-plone.pdf
List of products mentioned:
www.jazkarta.com/ploneproducts
www.jazkarta.com