Plone demo and features
Apr. 16, 2005. Demonstrate Plone's built-in features and additional functionality gained through the use of 3rd party products. Presented at the Grassroots Use of Technology Conference, Tang Center MIT (4/16/05).
Plone core product + plugins (1)
- Workflow engine: creating, reviewing and publishing content
- WYWIWYG editing: image inserting, spellchecking, fullscreen editing
- Events calendar: publish and subscribe via iCal
- Keywords and Topics: associate and aggregate content
- Searching: cross-site searches, RSS feeds
- Security: users and groups
Plone core products + plugins (2)
- Modularity: extending functionality with 3rd party products
- Skins: change the look and feel
- Multisite hosting: manage multiple Plone sites, create them on-the-fly
- Advanced developer topics: code generation using UML, page templates and python
Introducing Plone workflow
- Default Plone workflow (using DCWorkflowGraph) basic workflow
- Creating a news item
- Submitting the news item for review
- Publishing the news item (appears in news portlet and news listing)
Uploading files
- Using web browser into /Members/manager/myfiles
- Using WebDAV / FTP - drag-n-drop
- PDF doc is recognized as such
- Upload MSWord doc as
Word example- convert to HTML (install WordExample) - Upload photo into /Members/manager/myimages
WYWIWYG editing
- QuickInstaller (install Kupu WYWIWYG editor)
- Insert photo into home page
- Full-screen mode
- Spell checker
- Use external editor (Photoshop) to resize image
Events calendar
- Create a folder to hold the events /Membesr/manager/myevents
- Create and publish event -> appears in event portlet
- View as Calendar (install CalendarX) demo1 demo2
- Publish calendar from iCal/Mozilla Calendar (install Calendaring)
- Subscribe to calendar
Keywords and Topics
- Assign keyword to news item and event item -> appears in related portlet
- Manage keywords (install PloneKeywordManager)
- Create a topic to aggregate items in a listing
- The future: use Haystack for auto-categorization of content
Searching
- keywords are highlighted
- subscribe to search as RSS feed (install PloneRSS2)
- cross-site searching (install PloneRSSSearch) demo
- search engine optimization - Google loves Plone sites! (install PloneSEO)
Security: Users and Groups
- Concept of user -> group -> role -> permission
- Users/groups management
- Sharing tab
- Extending with 3rd party products: TeamSpace, GrufSpaces, mxmWorkgroups, WorkspaceGear
Add-on products
- HTML -> PDF of any page (install Plone2PDF) demo
- Books directory (install ATAmazon) demo
- Wiki (install ZWiki) demo
- Blog (install Quills, SimpleBlog) demo1 demo2
- Links directory (install ATBookmarks)
- Contacts directory (install PloneContacts, mxmContacts)
- Public Action Manager (PAM
More add-on products
- Photos (install CMFPhoto) demo
- RSS feeds (install CMFSin, PloneRSSNG)
- Audio (install ATAudio, Plodcasting and Plodcasting wiki page)
- Video (lilix.movie) demo
- Discussion forums (install CMFBoard) demo
- Newsletter (CMFNewsletter, PloneGazette)
- Mailing list web-based archives (PloneMailboxer, PlonePostOffice) demo
Just "Plain Cool" add-on products
- Geographic mapping (PloneMap) demo
- Auto-categorization of content (Haystack for auto-categorization of content )
- E-Commerce (PloneMall) demo
- Multilingual (PloneTranslations, LinguaPlone, PloneTranslationAssistant) demo
- Flash integration (XML-RPC ActionScript library) demo
- Drag-n-drop page design (CompositePack) - demo Nick Rabinowitz from Oxfam demonstrates use on oxfamamerica.org site.
Skinning:
- Choose from various default skins in
Portal Skin Settings - Individual users can select their own skin in
My Preferences - Minor changes to colors (already installed CSSManager)
- Show CSS properties using Mouseover DOM Inspector
- Web Developer Firefox extension - DOM Inspector
- External editor to edit ploneCustom.css in BBEdit
Multisite hosting
- 1 Zope / many Plone sites
- Each Plone site has its own local manager
- domain name mapping (org1.domain.com -> /org1)
- rapid setup using customization policy
Advanced developer topics
- Page templates - designer and coder can work simultaneously on the files
- ArchGenXML - auto-generation of code based on UML model
- Python (points from Zope3 book)
