Plone vs The New Guy
The Initial Struggles of a Beginning Plone Developer
John Hren
University Wisconsin - Oshkosh
The Point of the Presentation
• Help new people (people newer than me)
learn more efficiently
• Give those who train new people some ideas
on how to teach Plone
• Add some new thought as to what should be
put in training material
• Show the steps I went through to create and
implement the Time Conflict Card Product
Why Am I The New Guy
• 20 years in Distribution as a Manager, Quality
Director, Buyer, Branch Manager
• Laid off in 2008
• Went back to school at UW-Oshkosh in 2009
• Majored in Computer Science
• Graduated May 2011
• Started work at UW-Oshkosh June 2011
Why is Plone, Plone
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CMS (content management system)
Python
Object orientated database
TAL Expressions? Otherwise known as a “Simple
TAL Expression”
Buildout and Bootstrap.py
Theming
ZOPE
Which leads to………
A Pretty Steep Learning
Curve/Cliff/Wall
What’s In My Quiver When I Started?
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A Canadian (Kim Nguyen)
UW-Oshkosh Development Staff
Some Plone experience with OIE
Google
Professional Plone Development 4 by Martin
Aspeli
• Plone.org
• Which makes the Score about……
Plone 31 and John 0
But the good thing was, I did have a lot of help and the game was just
starting.
My Initial Job Duties
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Learn
Help Kim implement Intranet
Add new ideas
Turn forms into products
Try not to get in the way
Say nice things about Canada
How I Learned
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http://plone.org/
http://zope.org/
http://www.python.org/
http://readthedocs.org/docs/collectivedocs/en/latest/
• https://ploud.com/index.html
• Professional Plone 4 Development by Martin
Aspeli
More Learning
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http://www.buildout.org/
http://wiki.zope.org/ZPT/SimpleTutorial TAL info
http://plone.293351.n2.nabble.com/
http://www.zodb.org/
http://docs.diazo.org/en/latest/introduction.htm
http://plone.org/products/dexterity/documentati
on/manual/developer-manual
Even More Learning
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Classes
Conferences
Stack Overflow
Chat Room
Sprints
User Groups
Tune Up Days
Polk Library and their ebooks
(www.uwosh.edu/library)
Remember Though,
There is so much documentation out there that getting off track is easy.
My experience though is don’t ask a question without trying to figure out
the answer on your own first
A Quick Note To Help Document
Creators
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Thank you for your input
Indexes
Reference notes
Definition of Terms
Don’t assume, write to your audience
A Quick Example
Drupal’s Learning Page
A Quick Note About IDE’s
• Have a favorite
• Use it to check in/out code to your repository
• Sublime Text 2
The Time Conflict Card Product
Intranet Task Force Says, “Pick a Form.”
• Study was done to determine possible choices
for biggest impact
• Needed a form that would hit all cross
sections of the campus,
Instructors/Staff/Students
• Add/Drop/Time Conflict Card
• Initiated by Students, signed off by Instructors,
entered by Staff, Great Choice!
What is a Add/Drop/Time Conflict
Card?
Meeting With The Registrar
• What constitutes an approval
• Sometimes instructors sign off other times
departments sign off
• Legal claims
• Signing off on class limit and requisites
• Comments
• Security
• One last question….
WHAT DID WE GET OURSELVES
INTO??!!??!!
Decision Time
• Start with Time Conflict Card
• Lightly used
• Design Functionality will be used in both Add
and Drop cards
• Testing could be managed easier
• Transitions = Approval
Design Problems
• Instructors should only see the cards they
need to sign off on
• Needs to be user friendly interface
• Comments need to be easily accessible
• Notification system
• Can’t let cards sit to long
• Complicated Workflow
Tools
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PloneFormGen
Northstar
Workflow Manager
Collective.easytemplate
JQuery
PloneFormGen
Making The Form
Generating the Product
The Product is Generated
• The product will be downloaded into your
download file.
• It then needs to be moved to your src file
Don’t Forget to Install Your Product
Here is Your Product
Workflow Manager
Workflow State
Workflow Transition
Sanity Check
Diagram
Create and Manage a Card
Start a New Time Conflict Card
The Top of the Card
The Bottom of the Card
Filling The Card Out
Filling Out the Card
Submitting
The Code
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Jquery
Collective.easy.template
Content.py
View.pt
Thank you for listening!
John Hren
University Wisconsin - Oshkosh
hrenj@uwosh.edu