First Technology Transfer
Digital Embedded and Information Systems Training and Consultancy
Web Technologies Training and Consultancy

Course PYT106
Plone/Zope CMS (Content Management System) Web Site Development

Duration: 5 Days

Synopsis

This course will cover the installation, configuration, development and deployment of Web Sites using the Plone/Zope framework. About 50% of the time will be instructor presentation and about 50% will be hands on labs. The course will cover both Plone 2.5 and 3.2 as well as Zope 2.x, and use of Zope 3.x features in Plone 2.5 and Plone 3.2

Prerequisites

• Attendees are expected to be experienced Python programmers with experience of web application development using HTML / XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and Ajax.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Contents

Overview of Content Management and Workflow Systems

Overview of the Zope 2 and Zope 3 Frameworks

Overview of Plone 2.5 and Plone 3.2 and how they relate to Zope 2 and Zope 3

Principles of Design, Planning and Testing of a Plone CMS

An introductory look at Plone

• Basic Elements and Concepts of a Plone CMS
  • Documents
  • Users
  • Collections
  • Portlets
  • Workflows
  • Keywords
  • Folder sharing
  • Plone is built on Zope and CMF

Introduction to Zope

• ZMI (Zope Management Interface)
• acquisition machinery
• Interfaces and adapters
• Users and Permissions
• Introduction to CMF

Plone in the ZMI

• Tabs in the ZMI
• Tools in the ZMI
  • portal_catalog
  • portal_actions
  • portal_workflow
  • portal_setup
  • portal_types

Understanding Users and permissions in Zope

Understanding Users and permissions in Plone

Basics of ZPT - Zope Page templates

• TAL
• The TAL namespace
  • tal:replace
  • tal:content
  • tal:repeat
  • tal:define
  • tal:condition
• TALES
  • Path expressions
  • Python expressions
  • String expressions
• METAL
  • Macros
  • Slots
  • Defining and using macros
  • Defining and using slots
  • Master page
  • Portlets - "blurbs"
  • Plone 3 portlets
• Providers in place of macros

Skins

• Purpose
• Precedence
• Selecting template to change
• Non layout aspects of portal_skins
  • Code
  • Properties
• Zope 3 Views

Loading and Retrieving Information in Plone

• WebDav and FTP
• .zexp and .xml (via the ZMI)
• External object storage
• Working with relational databases

Plone Development

• Document types using Archetypes
• Varieties of fields and widgets
• Automatic updating of fields
• References
• Collection objects
• Buildouts

Tool implementation

Workflows

• Customising workflows via the ZMI
• Using a Product to add a workflow

Plone 3's Notable

• Content rules
• Locating page templates and customisations
• New roles and workflows supported in Plone 3
• Adapters