NEWLUG (NorthEast Wisconsin Linux Users Group) March 2011 Presentation. Topic: Plone

1. Plone
An overview

2. Background
Using and developing with Plone for about two and half
years
Develop with other python web technologies
Work at Wildcard Corp

3. What I'll be talking about
Areas
What it is
What can it do
Who uses it
Deployment
Should I use it?

4. Background
Open source
Content Management System(interprise level)
Python
GPL2
Trademark owned by foundation
Very friendly to contributors
Friendly and helpful community
ZODB object database(before NOSQL was cool)

5. Installation
Download package from plone.org
Run the installer
Comes with built-in webserver
Run
./bin/instance start
Or
./bin/instance fg # foreground mode
Uses buildout for installing packages and managing
configuration settings
./bin/buildout

6. Intuitive Interface
co-founded by Alexander Limi, usability expert for Mozilla

7. Hierarchal content management
Content decides the url structure of your site and navigation is
automatically generated for you.

8. Search-ability/Usability
Google indexes Plone pages very well
Built-in live search
Indexes doc, pdf, etc

9. Internationalization
Has support for over 200 languages
Diverse community of developers and contributors across
the world.
Popular in Europe, South America and Japan

10. Advanced workflow system
Tied in with it's fine grained permissions model, it makes it
very easy to control document flow and access on your site.
Also, provides a TTW(through the web) tool to manage
custom workflows

11. Content rules
Allow you to do actions when different things are done on the
site.
Events
content created/edited/deleted
workflow changed
Actions
send emails
log
notify user
move, delete, transition

12. Form creation
Powerful framework for building forms TTW.

13. Versioning support
Built-in support for versioning of content

14. Security track record
Best track record of any open source CMS
Used by many government agencies because of it's track
record

15. Who uses it?
Government: FBI, CIA, NASA, Brazilian Government,
others...
Universities: UW Oshkosh, Penn State, Washington State,
North Carolina, Utah, etc
Yale and MIT Open courseware
Non-profits: Amnesty international, Oxfam
Others: Free Software Foundation, Novell Inc, Nokia(QT),
EngageMedia, Discover Magazine, Connexions, Chicago
History Museum
Also often used for intranets
Source: http://plone.org/support/sites

16. Deployment
Not your typical php deployment...
Requires long running python process
Scalable--easy to use multiple clients that connect back to
the database server
CPU/Memory heavy
Typically use nginx with load balancer and/or caching proxy
in front to balance traffic between client processes
Support for integration with varnish and squid with
automatic purge requests
buildout provides a mechanism to version control your
configuration so development can easily mirror deployment

17. Who is it for?
if you're thinking about using it for your blog, you're probably
better off just using wordpress...
many different content editors
complex workflow needs
fine grained permission management requirements
very useful for intranets

18. Thanks for listening...
Presented by:
Nathan Van Gheem
www.nathanvangheem.com