You're never alone with Plone

By China Martens, IDG News Service, 07/24/07

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Ask Plone users what they like best about the open-source content management software and chances are a key feature they'll list along with ease of use and multilingual support is the community of experts that's grown around the product.

Having access to knowledgeable people is of particular importance to Plone users right now as the software, which is based on the open-source Zope Web application framework, continues to incorporate more and more Zope 3 functionality. There's a sizeable skills gap among users who are familiar only with earlier versions of the application server and not the most recent release. The community is also putting the finishing touches on version 3.0 of Plone itself due out next month.

Plone, named after a British electronica band, began life in 2000 as an attempt by the project's cofounders Alexander Limi in Norway and Alan Runyan in the U.S. to create a more user-friendly interface or skin for Zope 2. Plone helps users manage documents, files and images through a Web interface and also lets them publish that content to the Internet or to an intranet. Earlier this month, Limi announced that more than one million copies of Plone had been downloaded so far from the Plone.org Web site.

One way of getting Plone users together is a sprint, a three to five day meeting where participants work in small groups to develop, test and document new functionality for the software. The latest sprint took place in Boston and focused on improving the handling of audio and video files and images in the Plone4Artists software bundle used for creating portal Web sites.

Aaron VanDerlip, from nonprofit relief agency Oxfam America, was among the participants. The organization's Web site is based on Plone. He said the site's mettle was tested and proved strong and stable when donors flocked to make online contributions to Oxfam to help the survivors of the terrible tsunami that rocked South Asia on Dec. 26, 2004.

Looking to the future, Oxfam would like to add audio and video to its Web site both as a way to attract more donations for its relief work and to show donors how their money has been spent. VanDerlip is also keen to see a lower bandwidth version of the site accessible to those with limited connectivity options as well as catering to the needs of people visiting the site from their mobile phones.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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