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Plone (content management system)
Encyclopedia
Plone is a free
and open source content management system
built on top of the Zope
application server
. In principle, Plone can be used for any kind of website
, including blogs, internet
sites, webshops and internal website
s. It is also well positioned to be used as a document publishing system
and groupware
collaboration tool. The strengths of Plone are its flexible and adaptable workflow
, very good security, extensibility, high usability and flexibility.
Plone is released under the GNU General Public License
(GPL) and is designed to be extensible. Major development is conducted periodically during special meetings
called Plone Sprints. Additional functionality is added to Plone with Products, which may be distributed through the Plone website or otherwise. The Plone Foundation holds and enforces all copyrights and trademark
s. Plone also has legal backing from the council of the Software Freedom Law Center
.
MediaWiki
's "Monobook" layout is based partially on the Plone style sheets. High-profile public sector users include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Brazilian Government, United Nations, City of Bern (Switzerland), New South Wales Government (Australia), and European Environment Agency.
layer on top of the Zope
Content Management Framework. The first version was released in 2001. The project quickly grew into a community, receiving plenty of new add-on products from its users. The increase in community led to the creation of the annual Plone conference in 2003, which is still running today. In addition, "sprints" are held, where groups of developers meet to work on Plone, ranging from a couple of days to a week. In March 2004, Plone 2.0 was released. This release brought more customizable features to Plone, and enhanced the add-on functions. In May 2004, the Plone Foundation was created for the development, marketing, and protection of Plone. The Foundation has ownership rights over the Plone codebase, trademarks, and domain names. Even though the foundation was set up to protect ownership rights, Plone remains open source
.
On March 12, 2007, Plone 3 was released. This new release brought inline editing, an upgraded visual editor, and strengthened security, among many other enhancements. Plone 4 was released in September 2010. Up to September 2007, there have been over 200 developers contributing to Plone's code. Plone won two Packt
Open Source CMS Awards.
application server, which is written in Python
. Plone by default stores all information in Zope's built-in transactional object database (ZODB). It comes with installers for Windows
, Mac OS X
, and Linux
, along with other operating systems. New updates are released regularly on Plone's website. Plone is available in over 35 languages. Its interface conforms to WCAG-AAA
and U.S. section 508
, which allows people with disabilities to properly access and use Plone. A major part of Plone is its use of skins
and themes
. When working with Plone, templates can be used to customize a website's look. These templates are written with Cascading Style Sheets
. In addition, Plone comes with a user management system called Pluggable Authentication Service. Introduced in Plone 2.5, "PAS" is used to properly sort actions from different users to their respective folders or accounts. PAS is also used to search for users and groups in Plone. Most importantly, PAS covers the security involved for users, requiring authentication in order to login to Plone. This gives users an increase in both security and organization with their content.
A large part of Plone's changes have come from its community. Since Plone is open source, the members of the Plone community regularly make alterations or add-ons to Plone's interface, and make these changes available to the rest of the community via Plone's website. The name Plone comes from a band
by that name and "Plone should look and feel like the band sounds".
The other category includes CSS, XSLT and so on.
Plone has an excellent security record compared to other popular content management systems. This security record has led to widespread adoption of Plone by government and non-government organizations, including the FBI.
Plone has been rated as lagging in repository services when compared to other major CMSs.
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and open source content management system
Content management system
A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
built on top of the Zope
Zope
Zope is a free and open-source, object-oriented Web application server written in the Python programming language. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing methodology for the Web...
application server
Application server
An application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...
. In principle, Plone can be used for any kind of website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
, including blogs, internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
sites, webshops and internal website
Intranet
An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...
s. It is also well positioned to be used as a document publishing system
Document management system
A document management system is a computer system used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. It is usually also capable of keeping track of the different versions created by different users . The term has some overlap with the concepts of content management...
and groupware
Collaborative software
Collaborative software is computer software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve goals...
collaboration tool. The strengths of Plone are its flexible and adaptable workflow
Workflow
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
, very good security, extensibility, high usability and flexibility.
Plone is released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL) and is designed to be extensible. Major development is conducted periodically during special meetings
Hackathon
A hackathon, a hacker neologism, is an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming. The spirit of a hackathon is to collaboratively build programs and applications. Hackathons are typically between several days and a week in length...
called Plone Sprints. Additional functionality is added to Plone with Products, which may be distributed through the Plone website or otherwise. The Plone Foundation holds and enforces all copyrights and trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
s. Plone also has legal backing from the council of the Software Freedom Law Center
Software Freedom Law Center
The Software Freedom Law Center is an organization that provides pro bono legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Moglen as Chairman. Initial funding of US$4 million was pledged by...
.
MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
's "Monobook" layout is based partially on the Plone style sheets. High-profile public sector users include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Brazilian Government, United Nations, City of Bern (Switzerland), New South Wales Government (Australia), and European Environment Agency.
History
The Plone project was begun in 1999, by Alexander Limi, Alan Runyan, and Vidar Andersen. It was made as a usabilityUsability
Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job...
layer on top of the Zope
Zope
Zope is a free and open-source, object-oriented Web application server written in the Python programming language. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing methodology for the Web...
Content Management Framework. The first version was released in 2001. The project quickly grew into a community, receiving plenty of new add-on products from its users. The increase in community led to the creation of the annual Plone conference in 2003, which is still running today. In addition, "sprints" are held, where groups of developers meet to work on Plone, ranging from a couple of days to a week. In March 2004, Plone 2.0 was released. This release brought more customizable features to Plone, and enhanced the add-on functions. In May 2004, the Plone Foundation was created for the development, marketing, and protection of Plone. The Foundation has ownership rights over the Plone codebase, trademarks, and domain names. Even though the foundation was set up to protect ownership rights, Plone remains open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
.
On March 12, 2007, Plone 3 was released. This new release brought inline editing, an upgraded visual editor, and strengthened security, among many other enhancements. Plone 4 was released in September 2010. Up to September 2007, there have been over 200 developers contributing to Plone's code. Plone won two Packt
Packt
Packt, pronounced Packed, is a print on demand publishing company based in Birmingham, UK.-Company:Packt published its first book, Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management, in April 2004, and continues to specialize in publishing focused books on specific technologies and solutions...
Open Source CMS Awards.
Design
Plone is built on the ZopeZope
Zope is a free and open-source, object-oriented Web application server written in the Python programming language. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing methodology for the Web...
application server, which is written in Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
. Plone by default stores all information in Zope's built-in transactional object database (ZODB). It comes with installers for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, along with other operating systems. New updates are released regularly on Plone's website. Plone is available in over 35 languages. Its interface conforms to WCAG-AAA
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are part of a series of Web accessibility guidelines published by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative. They consist of a set of guidelines for making content accessible, primarily for disabled users, but also for all user agents, including highly limited...
and U.S. section 508
Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
In 1998 the US Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities...
, which allows people with disabilities to properly access and use Plone. A major part of Plone is its use of skins
Skin (computing)
In computing, a skin is a custom graphical appearance achieved by the use of a graphical user interface that can be applied to specific software and websites to suit the purpose, topic, or tastes of different users....
and themes
Theme (computing)
In computing, a theme is a preset package containing graphical appearance details, used to customize the look and feel of an operating system, widget set or window manager....
. When working with Plone, templates can be used to customize a website's look. These templates are written with Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
. In addition, Plone comes with a user management system called Pluggable Authentication Service. Introduced in Plone 2.5, "PAS" is used to properly sort actions from different users to their respective folders or accounts. PAS is also used to search for users and groups in Plone. Most importantly, PAS covers the security involved for users, requiring authentication in order to login to Plone. This gives users an increase in both security and organization with their content.
A large part of Plone's changes have come from its community. Since Plone is open source, the members of the Plone community regularly make alterations or add-ons to Plone's interface, and make these changes available to the rest of the community via Plone's website. The name Plone comes from a band
Plone (band)
Plone was an electronic music band from Birmingham, England.-Career:The group was created in late 1994 when Mark Cancellara and Mike Johnston started to buy old analogue keyboards and fx and began to rehearse making huge soundscapes...
by that name and "Plone should look and feel like the band sounds".
Languages
Plone is mainly developed in Python. However, there are other languages used within the project. Here is a table that summarizes the languages used in Plone, as it appears at the ohloh site of Plone project:- Python 55%
- JavaScript (including the jQuery JavaScript framework) 32%
- XML 11%
- Other 2%
The other category includes CSS, XSLT and so on.
Community
Since its release, many of Plone's updates and add-ons have come from its community. Events called Plone "sprints" consist of members of the community coming together for a week and helping improve Plone. The Plone conference is also attended and supported by the members of the Plone community. In addition, Plone has an active IRC channel to give support to users who have questions or concerns. Up through 2007, there have been over one million downloads of Plone. Plone's development team has also been ranked in the top 2% of the largest open source communities.Strengths and weaknesses
A 2007 comparison of CMSes rated Plone highly in a number of categories (standards conformance, access control, internationalization, aggregation, user-generated content, micro-applications, active user groups and value), however most of the major CMSes, including Plone, Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla, have undergone significant development since then, and continue to do so, and it is important to evaluate current releases. Plone is available on many different operating systems, due to its use of platform-independent underlying technologies such as Python and Zope. Plone's Web-based administrative interface is optimized for standards, allowing it to work with most common web browsers, and uses additional accessibility standards to help users who have disabilities. All of Plone's features are customizable, and free add-ons are available from the Plone website.Plone has an excellent security record compared to other popular content management systems. This security record has led to widespread adoption of Plone by government and non-government organizations, including the FBI.
Plone has been rated as lagging in repository services when compared to other major CMSs.
Features
These are some of the features available in Plone 3.0:- Inline editing
- Working Copy support
- Link and reference integrity checking
- Automatic locking and unlocking
- Collaboration and sharing
- Versioning, comparing history and reverting content
- Upgraded visual HTML editors
- WorkflowWorkflowA workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
capabilities - Authentication back-end
- Full-text indexing of Word and PDF documents
- Collections
- Presentation mode for content
- Support for the search engine Sitemap protocol
- Support for multiple mark-up formats
- Wiki support
- Automatic previous/next navigation
- Rules engine for content
- Auto-generated tables of contents
- Portlets enginePortletPortlets are pluggable user interface software components that are managed and displayed in a web portal. Portlets produce fragments of markup code that are aggregated into a portal. Typically, following the desktop metaphor, a portal page is displayed as a collection of non-overlapping portlet...
- Support, development, hosting & training
- LiveSearch
- Multilingual content management
- Time-based publishing, scheduled content expiration
- Human-readable URLs
- Powerful graphical page editor
- Navigation and updated site maps
- Resource compression
- Caching proxyProxy serverIn computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
integration - Drag and drop reordering of content
- XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
exports of site configurations - Localized workflow configuration
- Adjustable templates on content
- Standard content types
- Content is automatically formatted for printing
- Standards-compliant XHTMLXHTMLXHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
and CSSCSS-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code... - AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" and benefit from some system or entity...
compliant - RSSRSS-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
feed support - VideoVideoVideo is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
support via PlumiPlumiPlumi is a free software video sharing content management system based on Plone and primarily developed by the Asia-Pacific based EngageMedia, the Greece based Unweb.me consultancy, Infinite Recursion, and others. Plumi allows users to create a video sharing site by adding it to an existing Plone... - Automatic image scaling and thumbnail generation
- Free add-on products
- Cross-platformCross-platformIn computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
- Installer packages for multiple platforms
- Comment capabilities on any content
- Microformat supportMicroformatA microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup which seeks to re-use existing HTML/XHTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes in web pages and other contexts that support HTML, such as RSS...
- WebDAVWebDAVWeb-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
and FTP support - In-context editing
- BackupBackupIn information technology, a backup or the process of backing up is making copies of data which may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form is back up in two words, whereas the noun is backup....
support - Cut/copy/paste operations on content
See also
- Content management systemContent management systemA content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
- Open sourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
- List of content management systems
- List of applications with iCalendar support
- ZopeZopeZope is a free and open-source, object-oriented Web application server written in the Python programming language. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environment", and was the first system using the now common object publishing methodology for the Web...
External links
- Demo Plone Now
- "18 Things I Wish Were True About Plone" an essay by Plone founder Alexander Limi
- Directory of Plone services providers, case studies, and Plone-related news items
- Introducing Plone, a Screencast