SLUG (UNH) meeting notes for Mon 9 Jan 2006 - Plone CMS

[Ben Scott]

Hello all,

  I was able to attend the SLUG meeting last night (Mon 9 Jan 2006),
in Durham, at UNH.  In keeping with Ted Roche's excellent work with
providing notes on what happened at various meetings, I'd like to
share my recollections from last night.

  8 people attended, including myself.  Rob Anderson was the major
presenter/coordinator, with assistance (and heckling) from Tucker
Hurton.  Greg Rundlett was also there, and a few other people I've
seen before but forgot their names (I'm horrible with names.  If
you're reading this list, feel free to jump in!).

  The topic of the meeting was Plone.  Plone is a powerful, modular,
FOSS web CMS (Content Management System), written in Python, on top of
the Zope web application server.  Or so I'm told.  All I really know
is what I saw demoed at the meeting, and I have to say it looks pretty
neat.  Lots of icons and CSS and formatting and such.  Fairly sensible
UI and navigation.  And some very slick JavaScript/DHTML.

  Rob is planning on switching the SLUG website over to Plone.  He's
already got a working installation up and running.  Other LUG members
are encouraged to try it out.

  http://slug.gnhlug.org/plone/

  Once you've registered yourself as a Plone user, you can create
objects in your personal folder.  Objects are public by default. 
Types of objects include text documents, events (calendar magic), news
items, web links, other folders, arbitrary files, questionnaires, and
other stuff.  One neat kind of object is a "smart folder", which
presents other objects like a folder does, but doesn't actually
contain them.  Instead, a smart folder searches for objects which
match a criteria.

  Regular text documents support a number of different markup modes,
including raw HTML, and "Structured" and "unStructured" text, which
are kinda similar to wiki-text (I don't quite understand the details
yet).  HTML can be edited as raw text, or using Kupu, which is a very
impressive WYSIWYG formatted text editor using JavaScript.  (I'm told
it's very similar to FCKeditor, whatever that is.)

  Rob demonstrated the Plone makes customization very easy, though
plugin software modules (called "Products" in Plone-speak), a modular
design, easy skinning, a sophisticated scheme for managing customized
files, and other such things.  The web-based admin UI makes all of it
-- including deleting users -- very easy.

  Tucker demonstrated the web linking feature.  Meow.

  There was a bunch of other stuff, some of which just doesn't
translate well into email, some of which I didn't understand, and some
of which I just plain forgot.  But it was all very cool looking.

  Good job, Rob!

-- Ben "Just some guy" Scott