Plone

An overview

Jonas Nielsen

Agenda

• Main functionalities: Member folder, content objects, workflow

• Portlets, Skins

• Configuration in Zmi

• New content types

• Multilingual tools

What do plone add to zope

• Based on Zope and CMF

• Plone is a portal ready to use

Users

• Users can register themselves

• They have a member folder

• They have their own settings (e.g. name, preferred editing mode)

• Users can add and edit content types

• Users can request a document to be published and a publisher can then publish it.

User registration

Personal folder

Content creation

• Structured text

• Epoz

Portlets

• Plone has optional boxes in the left and the right side.

• These are set in the properties tab of the plone instance.

• Example portlets: about, events, calendar, favorites, login, navigation, news, related, review.

Portlets

Skins

• Plone can have different skins.

• It consists of prioritised folders in portal_skins. The user edits the custom folder which overwrites all the others.

• You normally overwrite main_template, ploneCustom.css, portal_logo (as a minimum) and add your own pictures and code.

• Code is written as Zope Page Templates (zpt).

Customizing of main_template

Other configuration

• Portal tabs, object tabs and folder buttons can be set in the zmi in portal_actions

Portal_actions

Plones form and navigation

• Set in portal_properties/navigation_properties (navigation) and portal_properties/form_properties (validation)

• Portal_Types and Portal_workflow

• Folder content can be syndicated as rss

Navigation_properties

Workflows

Creating a new content type

• If you use Factory-based type information you can’t add new fields.

• A new content type can be made as a file-system based product.

• Another method is using a tool called ”archetypes”. It creates a skeleton of the view and edit form of the type.

Portal types

Localization

• Date format and language can be set in plone itself.

• Plone 2 uses another tool than localizer. It is called ”Placeless translation service” and “i18nlayer” for content.

Documentation

• http://plone.org/documentation/

• There are newsgroups and irc channels available for discussing plone.

• ”The plone book” will be available in print in june. (currently online).

Conclusion / Discussion

• Plone adds a lot of reusable functionality

• Plone can be overkill (especially if you don’t need the member folder).

• Plone has nice and neutral user interface.

• Plone limits creative freedom