First impressions from PloneConf 2011

So, this is our first dispatch from PloneConf 2011:

New Plone user interface

Geir Baekholt (from Jarn) has shown the changes that will affect the way we will edit our Plone instances in the near future, particularly with Plone 5. Unlike other CMS's Plone is edited from the very same web interface that visitors use, which has its virtues and difficulties. Among the inconveniences, several are related to design and web look. So, here comes plone.app.cmsui to separate template management from the current editing interfaces.

Pyramide: an introduction

Pyramid is a web framework based on Python, part of the Pylons project. Its goal is to extract the best ideas from the Zope basis that underlines Plone and create an agile framework with that.

Clone to Plone

funnelweb is another of the interesting tools that we've seen today. Adam Terry from Pretaweb explained its magic, which consists in extracting content from any given website and channeling it through collective.transmogrifier that content comes into Plone. Migration to our platform of choice will be greatly improved by this.

Multiplayer Plone

One of the impacting presentations came from the coleagues at Jarn. Plone can be edited in multiplayer mode as if it were Google Docs, several users simultaneously. The tool to do that is based in the XMPP protocol that the Jabber IM machinery uses.

Dexterity in the wild

Now we use Archetypes to create diverse Plone ojects, but David Glick tells us that Dexterity is coming to fill that position. The example exposed has used, for a given model, contents not present in Plone but in an external database. Fine, but in our opinion, not still ready for multilngual elements.

How to create complex apps

Andrew Mleczko from the italian company RedTurtle has shown us the project that they developed for a customer. They required both an Intranet and an extranet and they built both with Pyramid (intra) and Plone (extra). Data were based in PostreSQL databases and were inserted on both platforms using SQLAlchemy.

Lightning Talks

These lighting talks are becoming one of the most exciting parts of PloneConf meetings. Just a couple of minutes to show wonders. Today, we found these talks to be interesting:

fa.bootstrap

fa.bootstrap is used to created Pyramid projects using pyramid_sqlalchemy and Twitter Bootstrap

Ploud

One of the creators of Plone, Alan Runyan, has introduced ploud.com. Create Plone sites easily, as if it were WordPress.com. You can choose from several themes or templates, or import your own ones...

PloneIDE

The Argentinan developer Franco Pellegrini needed some help to get to San Francisco (Martin Aspeli and others provided it) and he could finally expose PloneIDE to the community. With PloneIDE you can edit Python code, templates and ZCLM all directly from Plone. Spectacular indeed, colors to mark syntax, interactive debugger, various tricks for this and that. Pellegrini got an well deserved ovation.