PLONE

[Lee Tambiah <L_Tambiah linuxmail org>]

Im adding Ramon's Post here:

Hi,

I'm Ramon Navarro, a Plone Developer working for Headnet.dk. I've been
involved on GUADEC this year ( WIFI team ) and I would like to work on
some GNOME projects, for that reson I decided to help you in your
decision about CMS with my experience of 4 years Plone developer.

First I'll talk about bad things,

Python vs PHP
=============

   - It's well known that python is not as used as php on web pages
and that there are more developer that can help on php software,
that's true. Imho python is an easier language for CMS systems,
completly object oriented, more easy to learn and there are a lot of
projects on gnome that are using python, so surely that there will be
some voluteers that can help.

   - Python programming on Plone it's really simple on the last
versions, nowadays you can develop products, workflows, CMS objects
without any line of python code , only using Umbrello/Poseidon UML
software and ArchgenXML, and if you need to add some lines of code you
only need to know about OO and python, it's really well designed the
content management.

   - Also there are a lot of community arround plone and is increasing

   - My experience is that using python code instead of php you
normaly obtain more roubust code and more easy to maintain.

   - The ZOE/ZOPE framework allow high performance configuration and
with python threads you obtain a really scalable solution.

   - On my last company we get some php developers and they needed
two weeks to learn how to manage plone, every thing is really made
easy to do, you only need to know about that.

   - The most important thing is that is completly a different world
of all the other php CMS because of the python language, the
possibility to use multi  inheritance is powerfull, the design of ZOPE
it's quite simple and powerfull also.


and good things,

i18n
====

   - In plone you have support for i18n on both sides, the skin (
using .po files ) and the content ( using linguaplone )

   - It manages all the languages and have interfaces to translate
and edit having two versions at the same time

   - You can import the translated content using XML with marshalasing

   - You can decide browser negotiation, session, ...

   - Completly suport for RTL languages and non-western

   - You have different objects for each language so you can have
different images, layouts, ...

workflows
=========

   - All the workflow system is completly configurable without any
line of code

   - You can do whatever you want, move objects, permisions to see,
edit, comment , ...

LDAP
====

   - Is completly adaptable to LDAP, so you can do whatever you want,
having groups, permisions to groups, ...

   - You can also, if you want, edit LDAP from plone


look and feel
=============

   - Here ... it's the best system for doing every thing that you
want : I'm now working on this web page :
      - http://bolius.headnet.dk/
      - http://www.epsem.upc.edu/ <- that one has a product for
maintaining front pages based on widgets ( buttons, images changing,
.. all with date to enable it and when disable, .. )

   - You can also see :
      - http://creativecommons.org/
      - http://oxfam.org.uk/

   - You can do whatever you want if it can be done in xhtml/css/js
and the template languages to do that ( tal/metal/dtml ) are really
simple and well designed.

   - It's completely separated of the content and the rest of the
system. In my company every body that is skin developer doesn't need
to know too much about python code.


documentation
=============

   - There are a lot of documentation :
      - Plone Books : http://plone.org/documentation/books
      - Zope Books
      - next to 1000 tutorials, links, manuals, ...  ok
http://plone.org/documentation
      - Plone Online Book :
http://plone.org/documentation/manual/definitive-guide

   - Learning curve :
      - You can learn quickly how to manage
objects/products/Plone/workflows/translation/users without any line of
code, only with the ZMI interface
      - Python is a really quickly language to learn
      - Using UML ArchgenXML it's really easy to learn how to do Products
      - One example : One php design company decided to do a plone
project and they needed one weeks to learn skining features.
      - If you want to do some real core things then you should learn
more things and surely it two or three weeks or something like that

Security & Upgrade
==================

   - Zope is a completly secure framework with few security problems
on the last years. Plone is large used and no security problems apears.
   - Content security is well defined and easy to manage on ZMI
interface ( ZMI = Zope Management Interface )
   - Upgrade ... the object system allow simple methods for migrating
objects ( it's call archetype ) for upgrading the systems. You can
upgrade from all versions to actual version clicking a button  :)  (
really  old versions (2.0 and 1.X) you need to do some hacks )

User management
===============

   - You can create objects that are from plone, merge with LDAP,
create groups, share groups with LDAP, define roles with some
permisions, assign roles to groups, users, .... decide that one page
it's shared with some other users .... with ro, with rw, ....
Everything on the web

   - The sysadmin work is all on web interfaces ( there is only one
configuration file )


More things
===========

   - You can easily connect to webdav interface to edit the content
using openoffice, emacs, nvi, ...
   - You can use FCKEditor as the widget to edit RichText
   - You can use Squid or varnish as que proxy and zoe distributed
zope system to have a really scalable CMS system
   - You can decide catch policy ( by web interface ) deciding what
policy on what content, ... etag, ... ...
   - All the system is designed to follow REST webservices


and finally me and plone community,

I would engoy really to help on Plone GNOME web and doing as many
things as I can for finishing it as sson as possible. As I know there
is also Yang Hong that knows about Plone and the portal
http://www.gnome-cn.org/ is using Plone ( I thing he made it ). I've
been talking with some Plone gurus and they will help as much as
possible on this project ( we all love gnome job on our desktops  :)  )
I'm going to begin a PhD and finish my job so you can count with me.

If you have any question, just ask !!!

It certainly has a lot to offer and I don't have an issue with using another language such as python. What looks really good is the fact that it is likely to meet our i18n requirement. The themes you have shown created with PLONE have been created very well, and proves the flexibility of the CMS.

Meanwhile I don't think there is a way you can change the actual content in Drupal to another language, it only seems to work for the skin text. So that is not good, does anyone know if it can? 

PLONE is suddenly looking attractive.

Lee