A company without a Web site is unthinkable—and most companies and organizations have more than one site. Whether it's an external site for communicating with clients, an intranet for employees to use, or a site for direct client communication and feedback, all Web sites have a common problem—how to manage the content on them. This is a challenge that can often cost organizations large amounts of time and effort. Producing a powerful yet flexible system for these sites that meets ever-changing requirements while growing to meet your company's emerging needs isn't easy.

No matter what the requirements for your Web site are or the amount of content or users, Plone is a user-friendly, powerful solution that lets you easily add and edit any type of content through the Web, produce navigation and searches for that content, and apply security and workflow to that content.

Plone enables you to put together almost any Web site and easily update it. This lets you build content-rich sites quickly so you can gain a competitive advantage. Finally, probably the best things about this system are that it's free and it's open source. With its large and impressive feature set, it's comparable, if not better than, many closed-source content management systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mike Sugarbaker says the following when reporting on the Open Source Content Management Conference (OSCOM) in 2002 for the Mindjack site (http://www.mindjack.com/events/oscom.html):

"I won't do the complete rundown of all the 'competing' open-source content management frameworks. I'll cut to the chase: The winner is Plone. This 'productized' take on the six-year-old web application framework Zope was the package with the most tools, the most professionalism, the most traction, and, above all, the most buzz."

You can find the Plone Web site at http://www.plone.org, as shown in Figure 1-1. To try Plone easily, a demonstration site is available at http://demo.plone.org. There you can quickly and easily add and edit content through the Web. Specifically, you can add events, upload pictures, add documents, and process them all through the framework that Plone provides.

Figure 1-1. The Plone Web site

One simple definition for a Content Management System (CMS) is that it's a system for managing content. This is a rather unhelpful definition, so I'll break it down into smaller parts for a fuller explanation. I'll start with a broad definition of content: Content is a unit of data with some extra information attached to it. That piece of data could be a Web page, information about an upcoming event, a Microsoft Word document, an image, a movie clip, or any piece of data that has meaning to the organization deploying the system.

All these items are called content, and they all share similar attributes, such as the need to be added or edited by certain users and be published in various ways. A system called workflow controls these attributes. Workflow is logic defined by the organization's business rules, and it describes a system for managing the content.

Historically there has been a difference between document management systems and CMSs, but mostly these two systems have converged. The essential difference is the items being managed; it's often considered that content is any unit of information, and a document refers to something that's created and edited by humans using software such as Microsoft Office. Take, for example, a book: A book contains many units of data and may require management slightly different from that required by content. However, in most cases, this is a small difference, and products such as Plone are able to manage the small units of a larger piece of content and reassemble them.

With the ubiquitousness of the Web, many CMSs are now classified as Web CMSs, either because they have a Web-based interface or because they focus on a Web-based delivery system over the Internet or an intranet. Plone provides a Web management interface and Web-based delivery system.

The following is one definition of a CMS (http://www.contentmanager.eu.com/history.htm):

A CMS is a tool that enables a variety of (centralized) technical and (decentralized) nontechnical staff to create, edit, manage and finally publish a variety of content (such as text, graphics, video, and so on) whilst being constrained by a centralized set of rules, process, and workflows that ensure a coherent, validated Web site appearance.

Although not the only advantage of a CMS, the most obvious benefit of a CMS is coordinating a Web site easily. Take a situation where one person, a Webmaster, coordinates a Web site, either an intranet or an external site. Content comes from users in a variety of formats, and the Webmaster turns these into usable Web pages by converting them to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). If a user has to change those pages, then the user sends the changes to the Webmaster, who changes the pages, and so on.

This presents many problems for the organization, the biggest being that all content is flowing through one person - an obvious bottleneck. That one person can do only so much work, and if that person is sick or leaves the company, a great deal of productivity is lost in finding a replacement. The publishing process can be quite frustrating as e-mails fly between the Webmaster and the user trying to get content published.

What's needed is a system that does the following:

Separates the content of a page from the presentation: If the actual content is separate from the presentation method, then the content author doesn't need to know any HTML or how the page is delivered. In fact, one piece of content could have many different templates applied to it, including formats other than HTML, such as Portable Document Format (PDF), or Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). When you want to change the look and feel of the site, you have to change only that one template rather than all the content.

Allows certain users to add and edit content: If specified users can add and edit content easily, then there's no need to send content to the Webmaster or Web team. Instead, the user who wants to create a page can do so and edit it as much as necessary.

Applies rules to whom can publish what and when: Your business rules might not want just anybody publishing content on your Web site; for example, people in marketing would be able to publish to the press release part of the site and not to the engineering section.

Can apply business rules to content: If a person from marketing creates a press release, somebody in legal might need to review that document. In this case, the document will be passed through a review process that ensures it won't go live until these reviews are done.

Can search and index information intelligently: Since the CMS can keep track of structured information about the content (such as author's name, publication date, modification dates, categories, and so on), it can produce listings of content by author, recent content, and so on. It can also provide searching capabilities that are much smarter and more useful than just a simple textual search.

Although this example portrays paybacks that are more significant for large organizations, organizations of all levels benefit from this approach. In fact, typically small organizations that don't employ a full-time Webmaster can be one of the key beneficiaries of such a system. By installing a CMS, you can resolve all these issues and more.

The key factor of any CMS is that it provides a clear separation of the key elements in it: security, workflow, templates, and so on. For example, the templates presenting an item are separate from the content. This allows you to easily modify the presentation.

Plone is open source, licensed under the General Public License (GPL), which is a common open-source license that allows anyone to use the source for free. For more information about the GPL, go to the Free Software Foundation Web site at http://ww.gnu.org. You can examine any aspect of Plone's code and alter it to fit your application. There are no licensing fees to pay, there's no license that will expire, and all the code is visible. This open-source philosophy means that Plone already has a large user base and legion of developers, usability experts, translators, technical writers, and graphic designers who are able to work on Plone. By choosing Plone, you're not locked into one company; rather, nearly a dozen companies offer different Plone services.

That account gives you the right as a member to add content such as images, documents, and so forth. To join a site, click the join link in the top-right corner of the Web site (see Figure 3-1).

Figure 3-1. Clicking the join link in the top-right corner of the page

This will take you to a registration form that you'll have to complete (see Figure 3-2). Because this is the first Plone form you've encountered, take note of the following:

• Some fields are required; a little red box next to the text indicates the required fields.
• For most fields, some grayed-out help text beneath the field name indicates what you should enter.

Figure 3-2. The registration page

NOTE Because many of the Plone pages are quite large, the figures in this book have been cropped to show only the key parts (in this case, the form) and not the Plone logo or the footer. These elements are still there, but they're superfluous.

To complete the form, complete the fields that are reasonably obvious. The values of the fields are as follows:

Full Name: Enter your full name. This field is optional.

User Name: Enter the username you want to use. Most people choose an alphanumeric value without spaces, such as bob or jane97. This username will be used throughout the Web site to refer to you. This field is required.

E-mail: A valid e-mail address is required. This will allow the site administrator to contact you and to send a password to you. You can change this e-mail address later by editing your member preferences. This field is required.

Password and Confirm Password: This is the password you want to use; it must be more than four characters and can contain letters, numbers, and the underscore (_) character. Passwords are case sensitive (in other words, SomePassword isn't the same as somepassword). These fields are required.

Send a mail with the password: Check this box if you'd like your password sent to the e-mail address you provided. This field is optional.

Once you've completed this form, click Register to submit your information. If you've made any errors on this form, then you'll see a message at the top and the key fields that have an error highlighted. In Figure 3-3 I entered a password but didn't enter a value for the Confirm Password field. Again, this is the standard way that Plone forms will show errors to you.

Figure 3-3. Errors on a form

If you've completed the form correctly, then you'll be given the option of logging in immediately. Click the Log In button to log in. You'll see the page shown in Figure 3-4.

Figure 3-4. After registering

If you already have a username and password or are returning to a site you've previously joined, then you can enter your name and password in the boxes in the left column of the site and click the Log In button.

Internet Explorer 6.x

1. Select Tools > Internet Options.
2. Click the Privacy tab at the top of the screen.
3. Move the slider to Medium, and click OK.

Internet Explorer 5.x

1. Select Tools > Internet Options.
2. Click the Security tab at the top of the screen.
3. Click Custom Level, and scroll down to the Cookies section.
4. Set Allow Per-Session Cookies to Enable, and click OK.

Internet Explorer 4.x

1. Select View > Internet Options.
2. Click the Security tab at the top of the screen.
3. Click Custom Level, and scroll down to the Cookies section.
4. Select Always Accept Cookies or Prompt Before Accepting Cookies, and click OK.

Mozilla 1.x

1. Select Edit > Preferences.
2. Find Privacy & Security in the menu on the left. If there’s a plus sign (+) to the left of Privacy & Security, click it.
3. Select Cookies under Advanced.
4. Select Enable Cookies for the Originating Web Site Only or Enable All Cookies, and click OK.

Opera

1. Press F12.
2. Click Enable Cookies.

Netscape Navigator 6.x

1. Select Edit > Preferences.
2. Find Privacy & Security in the menu on the left. If there’s a triangle pointing to the right next to Privacy & Security, click it.
3. Select Cookies under Privacy & Security.
4. Select Enable Cookies for the Originating Web Site Only or Enable All Cookies, and click OK.

If you forget your password at some point, you can get it sent to the e-mail address provided when you registered with the Plone site. To have your password mailed to you, click the Forgot your password? link located in the left column of the Web site. This will bring up the forgotten password form, as shown in Figure 3-5; enter your login name, and a password will be e-mailed to you.

Figure 3-5. Getting a forgotten password

Unfortunately, if you have no longer access to that e-mail account, or you can't even remember the username, you'll have to contact a site administrator. Using the techniques discussed in Chapter 9, the administrator can change your e-mail and find your user account. Once logged in to the Plone site, you'll see a log out link in the upper-right corner. When your work is finished, it's good practice to log out of Plone site, especially if you're accessing it from a computer that's likely to be used by other people.

After you've logged in, the member bar in the top-right corner will change to represent the options available to you as a member of the site (see Figure 3-6).

Figure 3-6. Your personal choices in the top-right corner have changed.

One of these options is that each member has a folder created for them when they join a site. This folder is set up with particular security so only that member (and administrators) can add and edit the content in that folder. To access your personal folder, click the my folder link in the personal bar in the upper-right corner of the site. In the upper-right corner you'll also see a my preferences link; clicking this will open a list of personalization options. You'll see two choices at the moment; you can change your password, or you can go to the personal preferences and change key preferences in your site.

The change password form allows you to change your password. To complete the form, give your current password and the new password twice. After you've changed your password, the change will be immediate. You don't have to log in again; just remember your new password when you return.

The personal preferences form allows you to set a number of preferences that change how you see the site. These preferences are stored on the server so they're retained between uses of the site (see Figure 3-7).

Figure 3-7. Changing preferences

The options are as follows:

Full name: This is the full name you gave when you registered with the site.

E-mail: This is the e-mail address associated with your membership and is used a number of places in a Plone site. Most important, if you lose or forget your password, this is the address to which the system will send it.

Content editor: When editing complex content, you may want the help of an editor. If your site administrator has made one available, you can select it here. It will then be used when you click the edit tab of an object. If you're unsure, leave this as the default.

Listed status: This property specifies whether your profile will show up on the members tab and when someone searches the members listing.

Editing of Short Names: Objects have an ID or Short Name property that's used for the internal representation of the content object. This also shows up in the item's Web address and the item's Uniform Resource Locator (URL). By default these look something like News_Item.2002-11-16.4102, but you could make it much simpler, such as november_news, by changing the Short Name value.

NOTE When you change an object's name value, anything that references the older name will no longer be valid and will result in the page not being found. It's best not to change the name value after you submit an object for review or link to it from elsewhere. For this reason, I recommend setting this option to No.

Portrait: In larger organizations and in community Web sites, it's useful to see pictures of other members. The Portrait field allows you to upload a picture of yourself. The picture should be 75 by 100 pixels.

Once you've made the desired changes, click the Save button to commit the changes. Now that you've logged in, it's time to start adding and editing content.

Images are graphical pieces of content; you add them by selecting Image from the drop-down list. When you add an image, the name of the content changes to the file of the image. So, if you upload an image called photo.gif, it'll be accessible in Plone as photo.gif. When adding or uploading a new image, you can select the image from your hard drive by clicking the Browse button and selecting the file (see Figure 3-18).

Figure 3-18. Uploading an image

It's common for image filenames to end with an extension such as .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, or .pict. You can display images inside Plone on a Web page without having to download them to the local computer if the type of the image uploaded is viewable in the user's Web browser. The most common image types are .gif, .jpg, and .png, which are visible on almost computer system. Figure 3-19 shows an image of the Plone logo.

Figure 3-19. Viewing the image

You can't edit images directly; instead, you can edit the image on your hard drive using any program, such as Adobe Photoshop or GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Once complete, clicking the edit tab allows you upload your new image into Plone. If you do a lot of image manipulation, you can refer to Chapter 10, which covers External Editor, a tool that lets you edit images using a program without having to upload and download them.

A file is any arbitrary file that can be uploaded from your hard drive. To add a file, select File* from the drop-down list. On the edit tab, you'll see an Upload button that lets you pick the file from your hard drive. This could be any sort of item, including a plain-text file, a Microsoft Word document, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, an executable program, an Adobe Acrobat document, and so on. When you add a file, the name of the item in Plone changes to the name of the file uploaded. So, if you upload a file called *book.pdf, it'll be accessible in Plone as book.pdf. Figure 3-20 shows a plain-text file.

Figure 3-20. Adding a plain-text file

If the file is recognized as being text, then the contents of the file are shown in the Web page and are editable through the edit tab. Otherwise, the file is downloadable, and users must download it to their local hard drive and edit it there. Afterward they can upload it to the system. You'll note that a file object also has an extra download tab that lets you directly download the file.

An event can be something that will happen in the future or something that happened in past. You can add events to Plone, and they show up on the calendar. To add an event, select Event from the drop-down list. An event has more information than most Plone objects; however, most of it is self-explanatory (see Figure 3-21).

Figure 3-21. Adding an event

As usual, the only required field is Title; however, if you want the event to show up in the calendar, then you must provide a start and end time. Events can span multiple days or be in the past—as long as the start date is before the end date. To enter a date, select the appropriate dates from the drop-down menu, or click the little date icon to open a graphical date picker.

Once the event is published, it'll show up in the calendar. Moving a mouse over the item in the calendar will show the start and end dates for the event, as well as the event's title (see Figure 3-22).

Figure 3-22. Viewing events in the calendar

Link content types are the primary way for users to share links. These URLs can be resources on the Internet or an intranet, an internal resource, or anything to which the users have access. To add a link, select Link from the drop-down menu.

If you're going to link to an Internet resource, you should preface your link with the suitable protocol (for example, http://). For instance, if I was visiting an interesting page on the BBC's Web site and wanted to share this, I could add a link. The value of the URL will be the text in the address bar (for example, http://news.bbc.co.uk), as shown in Figure 3-23.

Figure 3-23. Adding a link

News items are commonly used in Web sites to display news that's of interest to the reader. Actually, a news item contains the same information as a document. The only real difference is that a news item will show up when a visitor clicks the news tab (once the item is published), as shown in Figure 3-24.

Figure 3-24. A list of news items

If I wanted to write a Web page that was going to be relevant for a long period of time, such as directions to my company's office, I'd use a document. If I wanted a page that detailed my exciting new product and drew attention to it, I'd use a news item. That news item would be visible under the news tab, and as new things happened, it'd slowly move down the page.

A folder is just like a folder or a directory on a hard drive, except that the folder and its contents exist inside Plone. You use a folder the same way; when you need to categorize content or make things a little clearer, you can group items and place them in a folder. To add a folder to your site, select Folder from the drop-down list. This will add a folder and take you to the edit properties page for that form. A folder has just three rather simple attributes that a user can edit: Name, Title, and Description. I've discussed all these attributes for documents, and nothing is different for folders.

Folders have two green tabs that represent slightly different views: contents and view. Actually, you may have already noticed that there's a contents tab accessible from any piece of content that you've added to the site; for example, when you were editing a document, the contents tab was there. That contents tab will always take you to the contents for that folder.

A topic allows you to collect content from disparate places throughout a Plone site and provide it in one location. Topics work by creating a criterion that's common to all the objects you'd like to gather. This criterion could be all images or all news items with Plone in the text. Because topics are a rather complicated type of content, only managers can add them initially. If you can't see Topic in the list of items to add, then you don't have the permission to do so.

To add a topic, select Topic from the drop-down list. After adding the topic, you can create key criteria on the criteria tab. The list of criteria and types is available in the drop-down box at the bottom of the page. This is a rather confusing list; I won't try to discuss it here. Unfortunately, what those terms are and what they mean is based heavily on the underlying technology, such as catalog indexes and object attributes. For this reason, Chapter 11 covers this in detail.

For example, to create a topic that shows all the images, you need to add a criterion that searches for content based on portal_type. For this, select a field name of portal_type, select String Criterion, and then click Add. These criteria will be added to the top of the page; in the field to the right of portal_type, enter Image, and then click Save. You now have criteria for your topic that will show all content that's an image. Returning to the view tab, you can now see all the images on a site.

As stated, topics are quite complicated, have a rather unfriendly interface, and are recommended for only advanced users. Many people have found topics useful, which is why they're still available in Plone; however, a more user-friendly system will be developed in the future.

Feedback from users is a vital part of any Web site. By allowing users to add comments, you ensure that users can give feedback, correct typographical errors, or otherwise discuss the content. You can discuss almost any piece of content in Plone; folders and topics are the only exceptions.

You can enable discussions in one of two ways. First, the owner of the content (otherwise known as the person who created it) turns on the discussion feature by clicking the properties tab of the object and selecting Enabled under the Allow Discussion on This Item header, as shown in Figure 3-26. Second, the default option applies the policy for that type of content as defined by the site administrator; setting this option is described for the administrator in Chapter 10.

Figure 3-26. Enabling discussions

Once discussions are enabled, click the Add Comment button to discuss the content, which opens a form for adding the comment (see Figure 3-27).

Figure 3-27. Adding a comment to a piece of content

Enter the subject of the comment and the text of the comment. The text is entered as plain text, so just type away as usual. Comments don't go through any workflow, so comments show up as soon as they've been added. Once a comment has been entered, it can be replied to, forming a threaded list of comments on an item. Further, comments will be entered in the catalog so they can be searched.

NOTE Administrators logged in as managers can remove any replies or entire threads. Disabling replies doesn't remove the comments; it just stops them being shown, so reenabling comments will show the existing comments again.

Plone contains a powerful search engine system based on Zope's ZCatalog. This search engine allows content to be cataloged in multiple ways and to be queried efficiently and quickly. Chapter 10 covers the internals of how this works and how it can be queried.

When you're searching for content, the content will be shown to a user if it's one of the two states: published or visible. At the top of your Plone site a search box provides an easy way to do simple textual searches in the same way as a search engine (see Figure 3-28). For example, enter Tuesday to find all content that contains the word Tuesday. A result of all matching content will display; click the title to get to the content.

Figure 3-28. A search for Tuesday on Plone.org

The search provides a quite sophisticated search, with features similar to most search engines. You can make this simple query quite complex. For example, you can use the following options:

Globbing: You can use an asterisk to signify any letters. For example, entering Tues* matches Tuesday and Tuesdays. You can't use the asterisk at the beginning of a word, though.

Single wildcards: You can use a question mark anywhere to signify one letter. For example, entering ro?e matches rope, rote, role, and so on. You can't use the question mark at the beginning of a word, though.

And: You can use the word and to signify that both terms on either side of the and must exist. For example, entering Rome and Tuesday will return a result of when both those words are in the content.

Or: You can use the word or to signify that either terms can exist. For example, entering Rome or Tuesday will return a result of when either of those words are in the content.

Not: You can use the word not to return results where the word isn't present; a prefix of and is required. For example, entering welcome and not page would return matches for pages that contained welcome, but not page.

Phrases: Phrases are grouped with double quotes (' ”) and signify several words one after the other. For example, entering 'welcome page” matches This welcome page is used to introduce you to the Plone Content Management System, but not Welcome to the front page of my Web site.

Not phrase: You can specify a phrase with a minus (-) prefix. For example, entering welcome -'welcome page” matches all pages with welcome in them, but not ones that match the phrase welcome page.

NOTE All searches are case insensitive.

Large sites may have a lot of results, so only 20 results display at a time. To page through the results, navigation bars will appear at the top and the bottom of the search result pages. The values on an object used in a search are its title, description, and body text (if the content type has any—for example, news items and documents).

You can narrow down the search results by using an advanced search, which is accessible via the search results of a standard search. In old Plone sites, a search tab brought users to this page; you can reenable this tab if you want, as covered in Chapter 4. The advanced search form enables a user to query content using a number of attributes, including title, keywords, description, review state, creation date, content type, and even author, as well as the search text (as used in the quick search available from the top-right corner), as shown in Figure 3-29.

Figure 3-29. Advanced search

Although the search text field searches both the title and description, you may want to search the description or title only. For that reason, these fields are presented on the advanced search form. You can't search the title and description using the wildcards, globbing, or any of the advanced search options. Any search result will match the input (if given) of all the fields; the results will be an intersection of all the terms.

Workflow is a chain of actions or events that occurs on something to achieve an objective. Workflow often expresses business rules that may exist. Every business has different rules and policies about tasks that must happen within that company. Examples of this include the following:

• Before an employee's time sheet is approved, it must be viewed and acknowledged by a supervisor.
• In a widget factory, for each widget assembled, users must be notified of the order and any change in the state of the widget as it passes through the factory.
• Before a Web page is published on a Web site, it must be approved by marketing, approved by the Webmaster, and translated by a linguist.

Workflow separates the logic of these business rules and standardizes the concept of thinking about these changes. By having separate logic, it's now easy for businesses to change the application to fit their business and their business rules. Often applications try to enforce a workflow on a business because the workflow is hard-coded into the application.

When a piece of content moves from one workflow state to another, the workflow process can change the security settings on that content. The security settings determine what user can perform what action on what piece of content. By manipulating the security settings through workflow, you can cause the security to change on a piece of content through its life cycle. Users from static systems or Zope often get confused because in Zope, all pieces of content have the same security settings throughout their life cycle.

Returning to the credit card example, you can infer the security settings for the credit card bill. One way to represent this is to produce a table that expands the security in general terms for the transitions that can occur at each of the various states, as shown in Table 8-1.

Table 8-1. The Transitions and Entities That Can Make Them

At this stage in Table 8-1, you've seen the transitions and who can make them. You haven't thought about the access that each user has to perform an action on an object at each point. For example, at which point can someone edit the bill, and when can it be viewed? These are called actions in Plone terminology, as shown in Table 8-2. I hope that only I have access to my own credit card statements! Likewise, at any stage, the bank is able to view the credit card bill and answer queries on it.

Table 8-2. The Actions and Entities That Can Make Them

Actually, as it turns out, I can't edit my credit card bill; only the bank can. I can send back my credit bill by rejecting it, but the bank is unlikely to want my edits. In this situation, assume the bank is the owner of the credit card bill. This demonstrates a concept called ownership. I may have several credit card bills from several banks, and in each case you can think of the bank as the owner. Each bank owns its own credit card bills, but Bank A isn't the owner of Bank B's bill. Table 8-3 combines the transitions and actions, changing the terms Me and Bank to Payee and Owner, respectively.

Table 8-3. The Transitions and Actions Combined, plus the Roles of People

Of course, this is a rather contrived example, but it illustrates how you can apply workflow to basic states. More transitions can occur here-for instance, I'd be more than happy for someone else to pay my credit card bill for me-but that's so unlikely that you shouldn't add it to the workflow or security.

Before showing how to create and edit workflows, I'll now show you the default workflows that ship with Plone.