Summary

Plone is a powerful, but highly complex, content management system written primarily in Python. Though Plone's feature set is extensive and robust, getting to the good stuff can be an exercise in frustration -- particularly for new Python developers. In this lecture, Rob will briefly introduce Plone and Zope, then step through custom product creation, show how to programatically add Plone content, and finally use a Python prompt to introspect the new content.

This talk has two primary goals. The first is to provide a hands-on tour of Plone's feature set, including powerful concepts that are not immediately apparent from the GUI. The second is to reveal that Plone is entirely Python driven, so you can use Python to both understand Plone and to extend Plone.

Presenter bio

The last time Rob was on the public speaking circuit was the turn of the millennium. He presented "The Blur Box" (a conceptual model of iterative processes) at PMI International Symposiums 2001 and 2002. That's right... pitching iterative methodologies to upper management. He has instructed courses at Purdue University and Virginia Tech. Since then, he has been developing enterprise level web applications in object-oriented frameworks written in Python and Smalltalk. Rob specializes in Plone development; he was the sponsorship chair for Camp Five, North America's first training in Zope 3 technologies, and has helped organize several Plone Bootcamps. Rob currently works as a bioinformaticist at UNC's Carolina Cardiovascular Biology Center and manages three enterprise-level Plone installations. He routinely presents at TrizPUG and has been published in accredited psychology, biology, and technology journals.

Intended audience

This lecture is intended for beginning to intermediate Python programmers who are interested in learning about the Plone Content Management System.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with Python syntax, including loops, imports, string formatting, and method calls

Some knowledge of Object-oriented development, including the concept of Python classes, class methods, and subclassing

Understand the concept of a content management system (delivering content securely through the web)

Attendee Requirements

This lecture will not require attendees to have any software installed. All examples will be documented in the handouts.

If attendees want to follow along, the following software should be installed:

1) A clean 2.5 or 3.0 Plone installation using the unified installer. (http://plone.org/products/plone/releases/)

2. ArgoUML, an open source UML modeling tool (http://argouml.tigris.org/)

3) Clouseau, an AJAX prompt used to explore a live Plone site http://plone.org/products/clouseau