The Plone 4 CMS

September 2, 2010 · Posted in CMS, Plone · Comment

The Plone community has raised the bar on their flagship content management system with the release of Plone 4. With the unveiling and release announcement of Plone 4, this is proving a busy week for fans of this CMS that runs on the Python-based Zope application server.

“Plone 4 is much faster, requires less memory, and performs well even when serving up massive files. “, says Plone co-founder and Firefox User Experience Lead Alexander Limi. “They [Plone users and developers] 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.”

Some of the significant changes and improvements in Plone 4 include:

Notable 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
Improved management of users and groups
Dynamic forms framework based on jQuery Tools
Improved first-run experience
Smooth upgrade experience
Reduced memory footprint
Upgraded infrastructure

Interestingly, the announcements and even the Plone 4 download page discuss the “under the hood” improvements available in the CMS in preparation for Plone 5. That’s right, they’re already talking about Plone’s future with Plone 5.

For addttional details about the Plone CMS be sure to visit Plone.org.

Tags: cmsreport, python, zope

Book Review for "Plone 3.3 Site Administration: Manage your site like a Plone professional"

August 17, 2010 · Posted in Plone · Comment

Book Review for “Plone 3.3 Site Administration: Manage your site like a Plone professional” by Alex Clark.

This book is written for the person who has to set up and run a Plone site. It’s not a development book– it doesn’t show you how to write software, rather it shows you how to acquire, install, and configure software components that will greatly enhance your Plone site. It covers a lot of ground, but much of it is covered in only the barest detail to instruct you in how to add a feature to your site. It doesn’t devote much text to explaining what the add-ons do, only how to get them and how to integrate them into your site. There’s also a lot of good general advice for a web-site administrator.

Here’s a rough run-down on the contents of the book:

Chapter 1

What you’ll need to run a Plone site (computer and basic tools, like a text editor) and installation procedures.

Chapter 2

Is titled “Site Basics” and covers the use of Buildout, which is a framework for installing add-ons in Plone. Buildout is very important for a Plone administrator, so it’s nice to have coverage of the tool. Truth be told, I wish there was a little more material on Buildout in this book, but this is enough to get you introduced and the web can tell you the rest. To the book’s credit, it uses a hands-on approach and immediately instructs you on how to use Buildout to change the default portlet navigation feature of your site and how to add blogging capabilities.

Tags: Administration, book, Packt, review

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

June 10, 2010 · Posted in CMS, Plone · Comment

Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook is a new book on plone development from Packt publishing open source. After receiving it, I decided to take a quick glance to it. The book features 364 pages, which makes it quite a big book for its price, organized in a cookbook approach, making it a very useful book.

Though the book is not written in a clasical style, because of its cookbook approach, there’s a progression in the recipes, as we can notice in the index:

Chapter 1, Getting Started
Chapter 2, Using Development Tools
Chapter 3, Creating Content Types with ArchGenXML
Chapter 4, Prevent Bugs through Testing
Chapter 5, Creating a Custom Content Type with Paster
Chapter 6, Creating Lightweight Content Types
Chapter 7, Improving Product Performance
Chapter 8, Internationalization
Chapter 9, Adding Security to your Products
Chapter 10, Improving User Interface with KSS
Chapter 11, Creating Portlets
Chapter 12, Extending Third-Party Products
Chapter 13, Interacting with other Systems: XML-RPC
Chapter 14, Getting our Products ready for Production

As you can notice from chapter titles there’s a progression we can follow through the book.But thanks to the cookbook approach we can easily find the recipe we need and use it. Note that it’s advisable to have knowledge on Plone, as the book doesn’t stops on explaining the basic concepts.

Don’t misunderstand this, the book is very thorough, it starts with the installation process, in Linux and Windows. The book is also very well explained, but basic knowledge is advisable so you can make the most from the book, as it’s not a beginners book.

Tags: book, python, review, zope