Monday, March 03, 2003

Using Plone for eGov Portals As I mentioned earlier, Ray Matthews has been investigating the use of Plone.  It appears that, in addition to Texas, Hawaii is also using it as a tool.  Brian Sweeting, who is supporting Spanish Fork City's website, posted the following: I have been searching high and low for a free content managment system/framework. I have played with all of the nuke type CMSes and some built on the Cocoon framework, but none that have I looked at so far have been as good as Plone. I discovered Plone, which is built on top of the Zope application server and Content Management Framework (CMF). I have been thoroughly impressed with its out-of-the-box capability, usability, and most of all extendability. Installation was a snap, I just downloaded an .EXE file and was using the system within 3 minutes. It installed Zope, Python, and Plone and runs as a service in Windows. There is also an installer for OS X and it is also available for linux and FreeBSD. I won't go into great detail, but here are some features of plone: Robust framework that allows you to "plug-in" CMF applications that have already been built. A customizable workflow system. Content editors can create directories and web pages, as well as other content, where they have permissions to do so, and then this content can be submitted for a reviewer's approval. Built-in role and user based security system that allows you to lock the system down and display personalized content through a single website. Extremely fast and scalable. There are a number of ways to optimize the system for performance. Custom slots (or gadgets in the Novell Portal Services terminology). For instance, I could create a slot that shows users in the IT department, if there are any network outages. Basically the only limits to this are your imagination and your level of programming skills with Python. Built in RSS. The system allows you to turn on syndication for any directory and you immediately have and RSS feed generated for all the objects in that directory. I could go on and on about this, but if you are interested in finding out more about Plone, head over to their website. I also recommend taking a look at this presentation of Plone made by the Hawaii State Government. Low bandwidth streaming (Windows Media) High bandwidth streaming (Windows Media) Wouldn't it be great if every municipal and county website manager maintained a weblog! 6:59:34 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.