CMS Expo: Tour of Plone

For the final session of the day at CMS Expo I decided to sit in on the tour of Plone talk. Admittedly, before this session it had been a long time since I took a hard look at Plone. I love the Python computer language, but I've never came across a project that sent me to Plone. Don't let my inactive use of Plone give you a reason to not consider it for a project of your own...Plone has a lot going for it.

Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 340 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries. The project has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has the best security track record of any major CMS. It is owned by the Plone Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is available for all major operating systems.

Ken Wasetis, President and CMS Solution Architect at Contextual, was the speaker for this session. After giving usual general background information for Plone, Ken quickly dives into what he believes to be one of Plone's biggest strengths: security. Due to the security strengths he also emphasizes to the crowd that Plone is larger than you think in government.

Some key points regarding Plone that I'm taking from this session include:

• The marketing of Plone seems focused on non-profits, egovernment, and education.
• Plone integrates well with other applications.
• Plone contains an audit trail (history of edits and workflow changes).
• Majority of the admin/authoring pages are in tab based menus. Personally, the admin UI looks a little busy to me. Any Plone users know if the admin pages are configurable?
• I do like the fact that the revision control for content is baked in. Yes, I know it's available on other CMS...but the speaker is presenting it and I think the importance of this feature is often overlooked.
• Check out IdealWare's evaluation of Plone for non-profits. It ranks Plone very well.
• Theming over the years has improved for Plone.