Plone 3 Products Development Cookbook

• Set up a news website with many banners hosted in OpenX and get to know about all the tools you must have before starting any project
• Easily detect and debug existing errors in the code by installing some special tools such as IPython, ipdb, and PDBDebugMode among others
• Create a new content type (based on an existing one) using ArchGenXML and wrap the final product into a Python egg
• Create a new content type from scratch automatically using paster
• Complement your content types by placing related information in new portlets and manage these portlets
• Improve the performance of your product by creating lightweight content types and taking advantage of other features of Plone
• Secure some tasks and content types by setting permissions, roles, groups, workflows and configuration options
• Protect the operation of your code from accidental changes by setting up some automatic tests such as unit tests, functional tests, and integration tests
• Easily translate your website by using internationalization facilities in Plone
• Display your final web page as per your requirement by adding new features to existing third-party products
• Integrate your products with external software like Python packages or other systems via XML-RPC
• Improve the user interface by creating simple client-side visual changes and server-side manipulation of objects with KSS

The Plone Content Management System is one of the best open source CMS, because by using Plone's development framework you can extend its functionality according to the specific requirements of your website. The Plone framework has lots of components that can be used to create add-ons or extensions called Plone Products. You can optimize your site for improved usability, accessibility, and security by creating custom Plone products.
This book covers recipes that will help you create custom Plone Products and implement them on your website. Every topic covered in this book is accompanied by essential fundamentals and step-by-step explanation that will help you understand it better. With the help of this book you will be able to create custom Plone products that are well suited for your website.

You can read the whole book or just pick recipes relevant for you; cross references help you understand the recipes even if you do not read them in order.

If you work through the book in order, you will start by setting up an example project of a news website that will be developed throughout the book. You will learn about all of the necessary tools a Plone developer must have before starting any project. You will develop the website further by detecting problems and debugging them. You will be able to modify code on-the-fly or get help on how to do some tasks by installing and using special tools such as IPython, ipdb, and PDBDebugMode. You will then create a new content type, based on an existing one, and wrap the final product into a Python egg.

You will set up automated testing to prevent errors in code that have evolved in the development stage. You will use paster to automatically create a new custom content type from scratch. You will improve the performance of your application by creating lightweight content types and following other recipes covered in this book. Key features such as usability, internationalization, accessibility and security are covered to make sure that your development and customizations will be at the level of Plone core and its most remarkable add-on products.

You will improve your user interface by creating simple client-side visual changes and server-side manipulation of objects. You will learn to create and manage portlets by using Portlet manager and customize your website by modifying third-party products. Finally you will learn to communicate with an external non-Python-based system and make your products available for future use.

Get solutions to easily create and manage Plone add-on products to make your site better, smarter, more usable, and more secure along with a brief explanation of common use cases

The examples in this book follow a sample project creating a digital newspaper website to meet the requirements of a fictional customer who wants to place commercial advertisements all over the site. The whole book is a comprehensive collection of recipes that elaborate a series of well known use cases. You will find an organized step-by-step procedure to accomplish each task followed by detailed explanations to better understand how and why each topic was undertaken, and many links to online references and other related sections in the book that can supplement the subject in question. You can read the whole book or just pick the recipes that are relevant for you; where necessary, cross references will help you understand the recipes even if you do not read them in sequential order.

This book is for programmers who have some knowledge of Python, Plone, and Zope. If you want to develop feature-rich add-on products in Plone, this book is for you. It is aimed at the development of backend features, so you need not have other web-related skills such as HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.