[Zope-Annce] Plone Beta Announcement

alan runyan alan runyan" <runyaga@runyaga.com
Sun, 15 Sep 2002 01:47:28 -0500


Plone reaches Beta stage
September 12, 2002 the Plone project reached beta and is now in feature
freeze.

We are welcoming all developers and end users to come and try out the new
system that we have been working on developing over the past 16 months. It
is based on the Python language, the Zope application server, and the
Content Management Framework product suite. We have given quite a bit of
attention to this release and feel that it is ready for anyone who is
interested in dynamic websites.

What is Plone? Plone is a software product that is focused on the end user
experience for managing dynamic websites - <buzzword>Content Management
System </buzzword>.

Plone does the work you hate doing. It helps avoid:

  a.. What developers hate - we have spent considerable amounts of time on
user experience combined with general look and feel. The CSS has been well
thought out and in use for over a year. We have taken great pains into
soliciting feedback from end users to try to create the lowest impedance
possible when interacting with a content management system. As a developer,
Plone makes it easy to have a consistent and good-looking interface.

  b.. What consultants hate - most consultants tends to be "customizers" of
software. They simply do not have the time to delve deep into the language
or shuffle data back and forth between the application and storage medium.
Once they learn the system they merely can create new content types by a
click of a button and create workflow definitions through the web!

  c.. What designers hate - we hide all of the technical plumbing and go out
of our way to make our XHTML extensible and easy to understand. All of our
PageTemplates are easily changed in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG tools so
that you do not have to be a technical person to change the design of a
website. Since all of the style is housed in the CSS the designer can
override our CSS or provide alternate styles to compliment the stock Plone
stylesheets.

  d.. What bosses hate - software that is a pain to install and evaluate.
Our Windows installer, made by Andy McKay of zopezen.org fame has written
enables a "pointy clicky" experience from install to managing the Plone
system. Plone "Just Works". They can use and test the system how they see
fit, no geek explanations needed.


The software is like any other software Product, Interwoven's Teamsite or
Vignettes StoryServer - it requires some up front understanding of the
technologies involved. We are trying to lower the bar as much as possible:
Python is the simplest language, Zope complexities are hidden by the
CMF/Plone Products, and third party products like Ben Saller's CMFTypes -
promise a future of creating Plone content without having to touch HTML!

You can find the plone website at http://plone.org/

cheers,

~runyaga, limi, plonista, tesdal and the rest of

The Plone Team