An introduction to Plone, presented at Linux Bangalore/2003 in November 2003 (the event renamed to FOSS.IN in 2005).

1. Introduction
to Plone
Kiran Jonnalagadda
jace@seacrow.co!
http://jace.seacrow.com/

2. Agenda
Who am I?
What is Plone?
The Plone architecture
Exploring the Plone UI
Behind the scenes
Community activity
2

3. Who am I?
Information Architect
Programming since 1991
Linux user since 1996
Technology writer since 1999
Zope and Python since 1999
Recently into Bioinformatics
3

4. What is Plone?
Web content management system
Plone
Highly modular
Based on Python, Zope and CMF:
Layers
Heavy emphasis on user interface
CMF
Zope
Z Object Publishing Environment
Content Management Framework
4
Python

5. What Does It Look Like?

7. Plone Architecture
Users &
Groups
Roles
Workflow
Permissions
Actions
Templates
Configuration
Content Types
Tools
Products

8. The User’s Folder

9. Content Types
Folder: contains any of the following
Document: contains HTML or STX
Event: defines an event
File: non-displayable content
Image: may be JPEG, GIF or PNG
News Item: document with date
Topic: virtual folder matching criteria
9

10. Events and news items appear
in the calendar with pop-up
descriptions.
10
Events and
News Items

11. Simple Search

12. Advanced
Search
Search by:
Any text string
Keywords
Date
Type
Author
Review status
12

13. Everything is Undoable

14. Role
State
Hidden
Anonymous
Member
Reviewer
Manager
Owner
}
Visible To
Owner
Visible
Reviewer
Pending
Reviewer
Increasing Visibility
Increasing Authority
Default Workflow
Published Anonymous
The Owner role is a special case and behaves differently

15. Workflow: “pending” state

16. Publishing a
Document

17. ACLs Based
Security Model
Users (and Groups) are assigned Roles
Roles have Permissions in a folder
Adding or deleting a document, etc.
Actions require a Permission for usage
Sub-folders may override Permissions
Sub-folders may define new Users
17

18. Entering the Zope
Management Interface

20. Management Tabs

21. Add New Items

22. Configuration Tools

23. Templates

25. Left and Right
Sidebars

31. Zope Page Templates
Calendar
Slot
Main Body
Slot
Templates define macros and slots using XML
namespaces. Macros fill slots in other templates.

32. Templates & Skins
The portal_skins tool contains folders and skins
Folders
Skins
Selection Order
SkinF 1
Default Skin
SkinF 1
SkinF 2
Skin 2
Product 1
Skin 3
Product 2
Skin 4
Product 1
Product 2
Skins specify the folders to look in for templates

33. Templates & Skins
The portal_skins tool contains folders and skins
Folders
Skins
Selection Order
SkinF 1
Default Skin
SkinF 2
SkinF 2
Skin 2
Product 1
Skin 3
Product 2
Skin 4
Product 1
Product 2
Skins specify the folders to look in for templates

34. File-system Layout
Zope/
doc/
Extensions/
import/
lib/
python/
Products/
var/
Data.fs
ZServer/
The base folder
Documentation
Individual Python scripts
For importing objects
Libraries
Zope’s extensions to Python
Plone and other extensions
Data folder
The database file
Web server

35. Installing a Product
Step 1/2: Extract into the Products folder. Restart Zope.

36. Installing a
Product
Step 2/2: Add an External
Method in the ZMI and
“Test” it:
Id: install
Module Name: Epoz.Install
Function Name: install
Replace “Epoz” with the
product name.
36

37. Supported Platforms
Supported Operating Systems
Windows
Linux
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
Solaris
Mac OS X
Supported Linux Distributions
Red Hat
Debian
Mandrake
SuSE
Gentoo

38. Who is Plone for?
For people setting up:
Weblogs, wikis, discussion boards
Community edited content sites
For people needing:
Ease of administration
Large feature-set and extensibility
38

39. Resources
Plone.org: main community site
Demo.Plone.org: test a live site here
ZopeLabs.com: free recipes
#plone on irc.FreeNode.net
Indian Zope and Python User Group:
Groups.Yahoo.com/group/izpug
39

40. IZPUG
Indian Zope and Python User Group
Mailing list at Yahoo! Groups:
groups.yahoo.com/group/izpug
Irregular meetings in Bangalore
40

41. This presentation was
prepared in the second
week of November 2003,
when Plone 2.0 was still
in beta. The new version
of
Plone
includes
significant changes to
the user interface and
looks slightly different
from the screen captures
shown here.
One notable new feature
is the extensive support
for RSS.
41
Note on
Plone 2.0

42. Thank You!
Questions?
If you want an interactive
demo, now is the time to
ask for it.