Plone is a
free and
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
content management system
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...
(CMS) built on top of the
Zope
Zope is a family of free and open-source software, free and open-source World Wide Web, web application servers written in Python (programming language), Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environm ...
application server
An application server is a server that hosts applications or software that delivers a business application through a communication protocol. For a typical web application, the application server sits behind the web servers.
An application ser ...
. Plone is positioned as an
enterprise CMS and is commonly used for
intranet
An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in ...
s and as part of the web presence of large organizations. High-profile public sector users include the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Brazilian Government, United Nations, City of Bern (Switzerland), New South Wales Government (Australia), and European Environment Agency.
Plone's proponents cite its security track record and its accessibility as reasons to choose Plone.
Plone has a long tradition of development occurring in so-called "
sprints", in-person meetings of developers over the course of several days, the first occurring in 2003
and nine occurring in 2014. The largest sprint of the year is the sprint immediately following the annual conference. Certain other sprints are considered ''strategic'' so are funded directly by the Plone Foundation, although very few attendees are sponsored directly. The Plone Foundation also holds and enforces all
copyrights
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
and
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...
s in Plone, and is assisted by legal counsel from the
Software Freedom Law Center
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is an organization that provides ''pro bono'' legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Moglen ...
.
History
The Plone project began in 1999 by Alexander Limi, Alan Runyan, and Vidar Andersen. It was made as a
usability
Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...
layer on top of the
Zope
Zope is a family of free and open-source software, free and open-source World Wide Web, web application servers written in Python (programming language), Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environm ...
Content Management Framework. The first version was released in 2001. The project quickly grew into a community, receiving plenty of new
add-on products from its users. The increase in community led to the creation of the annual Plone conference in 2003, which is still running today. In addition, "sprints" are held, where groups of developers meet to work on Plone, ranging from a couple of days to a week. In March 2004, Plone 2.0 was released. This release brought more customizable features to Plone, and enhanced the add-on functions. In May 2004, the Plone Foundation was created for the development, marketing, and protection of Plone. The Foundation has ownership rights over the Plone codebase, trademarks, and domain names. Even though the foundation was set up to protect ownership rights, Plone remains
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
.
On March 12, 2007, Plone 3 was released. This new release brought inline editing, an upgraded visual editor, and strengthened security, among many other enhancements. Plone 4 was released in September 2010. Plone won two
Packt
Packt is a publishing company founded in 2003 and headquartered in Birmingham, UK, with offices in Mumbai, India.
Packt primarily publishes print and electronic books and videos relating to information technology, including programming, web ...
Open Source CMS Awards.
Release history
Design
Plone runs on the
Zope
Zope is a family of free and open-source software, free and open-source World Wide Web, web application servers written in Python (programming language), Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environm ...
application server, which is written in
Python. Plone by default stores all information in Zope's built-in transactional object database (
ZODB). It comes with installers for
Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
,
macOS
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
, and
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
, along with other operating systems. New updates are released regularly on Plone's website. Plone is available in over 50 languages. It complies with
WCAG 2.0 AA and
U.S. section 508, which allows people with disabilities to access and use Plone. A major part of Plone is its use of
skins and
themes. Plone's Diazo theming engine can be used to customize a website's look. These themes are written with
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior.
Web browsers have ...
,
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
,
XSLT
XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text, or XSL Formatting Objects. These formats c ...
, and
Cascading Style Sheets. In addition, Plone comes with a user management system called Pluggable Authentication Service (PAS). PAS is used to search for users and groups in Plone. Most importantly, PAS covers the security involved for users and groups, requiring authentication in order to log into Plone. This gives users an increase in both security and organization with their content.
A large part of Plone's changes have come from its community. Since Plone is open source, the members of the Plone community regularly make alterations or add-ons to Plone's interface, and make these changes available to the rest of the community via Plone's website.
The name Plone comes from a
band by that name and "Plone should look and feel like the band sounds".
Languages
Plone is built on the Zope application framework and therefore is primarily written in Python but also contains large amounts of HTML and CSS, as well as JavaScript.
Plone uses
jQuery as its Javascript framework in current versions, after abandoning a declarative framework for progressive enhancement called
KSS. Plone uses an XML dialect called ZCML for configuration, as well as an XML based templating language, meaning approximately 10% of the total source code is XML based.
Add-on products
The community supports and distributes thousands of add-ons via company websites but mostly through PYPI and www.plone.org. There are currently 2149 packages available via PyPI for customizing Plone.
Since its release, many of Plone's updates and add-ons have come from its community. Events called Plone "sprints" consist of members of the community coming together for a week and helping improve Plone. The Plone conference is also attended and supported by the members of the Plone community. In addition, Plone has an active
IRC
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...
channel to give support to users who have questions or concerns. Up through 2007, there have been over one million downloads of Plone. Plone's development team has also been ranked in the top 2% of the largest open source communities.
Strengths and weaknesses
A 2007 comparison of CMSes rated Plone highly in a number of categories (standards conformance, access control, internationalization, aggregation,
user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), emerged from the rise of web services which allow a system's User (computing), users to create Content (media), content, such as images, videos, audio, text, testi ...
, micro-applications, active user groups and value).
However, as most of the major CMSes, including Plone,
Drupal
Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...
,
WordPress
WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...
and
Joomla
Joomla (), also styled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, p ...
, have undergone major development since then, only limited value can be drawn from this comparison. Plone is available on many different operating systems, due to its use of platform-independent underlying technologies such as Python and Zope. Plone's Web-based administrative interface is optimized for standards, allowing it to work with most common web browsers, and uses additional accessibility standards to help users with disabilities. All of Plone's features are customizable, and free add-ons are available from the Plone website.
Focus on security
Mitre is a not-for-profit corporation which hosts the
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system, originally Common Vulnerability Enumeration, provides a reference method for publicly known information security, information-security vulnerability (computing), vulnerabilities and exposures ...
(CVE) Database. The CVE database provides a worldwide reporting mechanism for developers and the industry and is a source feed into the U.S.
National Vulnerability Database
The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is the U.S. government repository of standards-based vulnerability management data represented using the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). This data enables automation of vulnerability managemen ...
(NVD).
According to Mitre, Plone has the lowest number of reported lifetime and year to date vulnerabilities when compared to other popular Content Management Systems. This security record has led to widespread adoption of Plone by government and non-governmental organizations, including the FBI.
The following table compares the number of CVEs as reported by Mitre. Logged CVEs take into account vulnerabilities exposed in the core product as well as the modules of the software, of which, the included modules may be provided by 3rd party vendors and not the primary software provider.
See also
*
Content management system
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...
*
Diazo (software)
Diazo, previously named xdv, is a general-purpose, open source website theming tool. It is written in Python and generates XSLT. Diazo creates a separation between theme pages (static HTML) and transformation rules (Diazo's own domain specific l ...
*
List of content management systems
Content management systems (CMS) are used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Many of them are built on top of separate content management frameworks. The list is limited to notable services.
Open source software
:''Thi ...
*
Zope
Zope is a family of free and open-source software, free and open-source World Wide Web, web application servers written in Python (programming language), Python, and their associated online community. Zope stands for "Z Object Publishing Environm ...
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Free content management systems
Zope
Free software programmed in Python
Cross-platform software
Web frameworks