Built on Zope and over 200 developers currently perfecting the program, Plone, an open source content management system (CMS), is an excellent piece of software. Perfecting the use of this program does require a bit of background work – mainly in the usage of Zope and Python.

Beginnings

First created by Alexander Limi, Vidar Andersen and Alan Runyan in 1999, the project was created to be used as a usability layer on top of Zope. Zope is an open source web application server written in Python. Plone was created to be used as either an internal website or on the internet. It’s an excellent groupware collaboration tool. The creators of the software came up with the product name as an homage to the band Plone. It is available for installing on Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems and the latest release can be found on the site’s download area (version 3.3.1 is available as of September 2009).

Installation

Installation of Plone is a very quick and painless process. When testing the installation on a Windows platform, there were very few steps. The first step is to run the installer located on the Plone.org download page. All files are placed within the C:\Program Files\Plone directory. The next step is to click on your Windows Start button, select ‘Run’ and then type in ‘cmd’. Once your command line window is open, type in ‘cd “C:\Program Files\Plone\”’. At this point, you can decide whether to run the Plone service in debug or production mode. More information on the details of running either instance can be found within the online documentation provided by Plone.org. Installing on a Linux platform is similarly simple – online documentation on this is also available.

Downsides of Plone

One of the issues with using Plone is the learning one needs to accomplish prior to using the program. An extensive familiarization with TAL (templating language for Zope), ZMI (management interface for Zope) and Python are all highly recommended before tackling this CMS. While offering quite a lot of online documentation, the Plone site doesn’t lend itself to a lot of preparation in this area.

Another downside to the program is that it is initially set to work as a community or portal content management system. Most personal and business web sites are not geared toward that style of hosting so quite a bit of “pruning” of the initially set features may be required. Otherwise, you may end up with a lot of users and user created folders you were not initially expecting with your new web site.

Lots of features to add

Once you do have a handle on the ins and outs of Plone, you’ll be pleased to find a nice assortment of features you can add. The list includes work flow capabilities, Wiki support, Live Search and many more. As Plone is open source, there are sure to be new additional features created on a regular basis.
Conclusion

When it comes to really great open source content management systems, Plone is definitely one of the best. With a bit of learning and a bit of tweaking, it can be a great web site administration tool.

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