Plone Conference Barcelona 2017

It was awesome to be back at Plone Conference this year. Finally! We have had participation in Plone conferences in 2009, 2011–2012 and 2014–2017, but for me the previous one was years ago: Plone Conference Bristol in 2014. Needless to say that I have missed the warm and welcoming atmosphere of a Plone conferences, and It's my pleasure to report that Barcelona did not let me down. Even the weather was still warm there in this October.

This year there was no single big Plone news at the conference. The latest major release of Plone CMS was released already two years ago, and the next feature release is still waiting for its gold master. Yet, there was still a lot of good news, and putting all the puzzle pieces together resulted in a clear picture of the future of Plone.

Disclaimer: These are obviously just my personal opinions on all these things Plone...

Plone Conference Barcelona was so much of fun that I took a piece of it with me back home.

Plone 2020 and beyond

At first, let's say it clear that Plone CMS remains to be a safe bet for a long-term enterprise CMS solution. If there ever was any doubt, whether Plone could make it to Python 3 in-time before the end of Python 2.7 maintenance in 2020, that should be no more. Plone will make it.

All the major blockers seem to have been solved, and the rest is just hard work left for our community (check some related talks by Alexander and Hanno about the recent events on that). Python 3 version of Zope application server powering Plone is already in beta, and it is scheduled to be released within a year. Plone, for sure, has still plenty of packages to be ported from Python 2.7 to Python 3, but there are already many sprints scheduled to continue that work in near future (including the already completed Barcelona Conference sprints). We might even have an alpha version of Plone on Python 3 before end of 2018.

In addition that, it's always good to mention, that Plone Foundation has continued to do its usual great job in all the possible paper work around managing Plone's copyrights and trademarks.

All these should be good and relaxing news for any long-term Plone user.

Let's go frontend!

The greatest challenge for Plone CMS seems to be keeping up with the ever increasing UX expections of the day, while complying with the high accessibility standards. After Plone 5 rewrote the default theme and whole front-end resource management in Plone, there are no longer blockers for using any current front-end tech with Plone. But just being able to use some tech is not enough – also the real work for better UX needs to be done. And even a lot has been done for Plone 5 and 5.1, that work seems to never end.

Plone Conference Barcelona included a great amount of front-end, user experience and accessibility related talks to educate our community. So many that I can only mention a few.

At first, there were talks regarding the current Plone user interface: Johannes gave a bit technical, but very comprehensive talk how the new frontend resource registries in Plone 5 really work. My talk instructed, how to combine the ancient powers of Zope application server with the modern Plone 5 theming support to achieve shorter iterations and faster deployments when developing new UX features. Our Rikupekka talked about our migration experiences from Plone 4 to Plone 5, and gave a demo about of the UI features we have developed using the approach I discussed in my talk. Finally, I want to mention Wildcards' Kim's talk about Castle CMS, which really showcased, how much difference well lead and focused UX development for Plone based distribution could do in just about a year. Although, the fact that Castle's development had to be forked a bit from the main Plone distribution is also telling, how difficult it is to make the same UX please everyone.

Then there were many talks about the future: there's a new branch of Plone user interfaces built completely in JavaScript on top of the great Plone REST API (which Timo gave a nice presentation about). With Plone REST API it's possible to combine the great and robust CMS features of our secure Plone backend with leading edge JavaScript based frontend. It also makes Plone based solutions feasible for the current generation of frontend developers, because only very basic Plone knowledge is needed to get started. And while there is no complete replacement of Plone user interface in JavaScript yet, there are SDK like projects with many familiar UI components already for ReactJS, Angular (check Eric's talk) and even on VueJS.

If these don't feel ambitious enough, there was one more thing: Albert's talk about Pastanaga UI – a proposal for next generation UI for generic CMSs.

Guillotina – server for a more civilized age

I'm not sure how common mistake it is, but at least we have sometimes ended up using Plone as a framework for projects, for which Plone was not really the most optimal solution. That has happened, because Plone has some very unique features we love and trust: object database with URL traversal, extremely flexible Zope Component Architecture, and very proven security model especially designed for hierarchical data.

At Barcelona conference, Nathan from Onna presented their new ”AsyncIO REST Resource Application Server” called Guillotina (open sourced through Plone Foundation)r What makes Guillotina very special and interesting is that it has all those unique features we have learned to love in Plone ”framework”, but with minimal server footprint and first class support for asynchronous programming using Python 3 AsyncIO event loop. That should allow Guillotina to go places where no Plone has gone before.

I really hope the next year brings us a suitable project to try Guillotina in practice...

There and back again

To summarize all this, here's my picture of the future of Plone on the base of Plone Conference Barcelona 2017 in three sentences:

• Plone CMS as we know it remains here to stay – the current users remain safe with Plone
• Plone REST API and all the UI SDKs based on it ”save Plone” by making it a feasible solution for content management related progressive web apps
• Guillotina ”saves Plone developers” by allowing them to transfer their current Plone ”framework” knowledge into era of high-performance Python 3 AsyncIO microservices.

Obviously there was a lot more in the conference than this. There was a lot of great talks by talented speakers. It was great to see all the old friends and make some new ones. I had a chance to meet my GSOC 2017 student Oshane Bailey. And there are no parties like parties in Plone Conferences.

Thanks once again for all the organizers. It was a pleasure to be there.

We'll see if I get to see Tokyo next year...

Photo of me, Oshane Bailey and David Bain by Maik Derstappen. They said this pose is to honor Usain Bolt.

From Plone 2, 3, or 4 to Plone 5 - Highlighting 5 Major Changes

 

 Plone at University of Jyväskylä since 2004

We have used Plone Content Management system at University of Jyväskylä for almost 12 years now.
Our main websites run with Plone and the site serves over 200 000 visitors and 2 000 000  pageviews/month. In addition, we have over 80 other different services built on Plone, using its built-in permission-, workflow- and content management features. These services include e.g. Moniviestin video publishing platform, Koppa study material portal, Opiskelijankompassi and wide array of different kind of forms, some combined with our payments-services. And if you didn't know, Plone is Open-source software. 

Read more about Plone usage @ JYU

• http://www.slideshare.net/rioksane/ploneconf-oksanen2014
• http://www.slideshare.net/rioksane/by-the-power-of-plone-case-carousel-at-university-of-jyvaskyla 

In this article I will discuss about how we are migrating from older Plone versions to the newest one and how the UI of Plone will radically change in version 5.  

Plone 2 and 3 and 4 work well - why upgrade to Plone 5?

With such history with Plone, there are still some sites or services that have been running with older Plone versions (2.1, 2.5 and 3.3) since 2006. After 2010 we have used only Plone 4.1 and up, the current version in most sites being Plone 4.3.x

For the record, these old sites have been generally rock solid, and there have been security patches even for  Plone 2 -versions.
However, we now want to migrate these sites to Plone 5. There are several good reasons. 

1. Easier maintentance: We want to get rid of old versions to make our maintenance job easier. To be able to maintain several services with few people, you need to optimize.

But - why didn't we migrate these sites to Plone 4.3? Why wait till Plone 5, which was released late 2015. Well, to be honest, we had more pressing projects to finish, but that's not all there is.

Why we go to Plone 5?

1. Plone 5 is fun. The user interface is modern, easy to use and the base template is responsive out of the box. It is lighter and faster than the previous versions. There is a cool layout system called Mosaic to use for customized, drag'n drop layouts. 
2. The customers of the old sites wanted to renew their services - it was a good time to do so with Plone 5.  

Enter Plone 5 - Listing 5 Major Changes

There are many, and to get a complet list, check out https://plone.com/5

Here I will highlight exactly 5 important changes compared to previous versions. These are based on my experience with our new Plone 5 sites. 

1. HTML5 Responsive Theme

"Plone 5's new default theme, Barceloneta, is responsive out the box to work with the full range of mobile devices and is written using HTML5 and CSS3."

See the difference with this example:

This is a capture from www.psykonet.fi using Plone 3 (which we haven't touched in 7 years, but are now migrating to Plone 5).

The site works ok, but there's no mobile device optimation.

Notice how the page is "cut out" on the right with smaller screens.

In Plone 5 this has been taken care of. The default theme is clean and responsive and easy to modify. At our university the default theme will go a long way: just change the logo (through your browser) and change some colors, and that's it:

Theming Plone 5 is easy.

And as said, the default theme is responsive out-of-the-box, so here's the same page in a smaller screen:

Plone 5 is responsive

2. "Green Bar" Replaced with More Powerful Toolbar

"The new toolbar consolidates the personal menu and Plone's longstanding "green bar." The toolbar can be positioned on the left or top of the browser window. With its optional icon text labels, the toolbar gives editors more screen space to focus on what matters: their content."

Here is an example of Plone 3 green toolbar. Its located in content area. On top right there's a personal bar.

The toolbar in Plone 3 is in the middle.

 And here is the same site at Plone 5 with the new toolbar on the left:

Plone 5 toolbar is on the left. Talk about WYSIWYG!

What you see is what you get in this case. All the Plone features are there, but the editing features are neatly separated from content.

At first (like, the first 10 seconds!) with the new toolbar I felt a little out of place with the way of adding and editing, but to be honest, out with the old an in with the new!

We presented Plone 5 briefly in our content managers seminar this april, and the response was generally positive - "When will you upgrade our departmental site to Plone 5, we volunteer!"

We presented Plone 5 briefly in our content managers seminar this april, and the response was generally positive - "When will you upgrade our departmental site to Plone 5, we volunteer!"

3. New TinyMCE 4 web editor

"Plone 5 comes with TinyMCE 4, the gold standard in WYSIWYG web editors. Coupled with new tools to insert links and images, it's easier than ever to craft and customize content."

One of the most important aspects of any CMS is the content editor. Plone 2-3 had Kupu, then came along TinyMCE 1.3.x. Both were quite fine (though different versions of Internet Explorer were struggling with them - but then again, when IE hasn't struggled with something...).

Plone 5 uses the new TinyMCE 4 series visual HTML editor: https://www.tinymce.com/

Kupu at Plone 3:

Kupu editor at Plone 3.2.2

TinyMCE 1.3.x at Plone 4.3.3:

TinyMCE 1.3 at Plone 4.3.

TinyMCE 4 at Plone 5  is clean and robust.

TinyMCE 4 at Plone 5

4. "Faster, Harder, Scooter" - Plone 5 is fast 

"Plone 5 sites are 15%-20% faster now with the new Chameleon templating engine, a fully backwards-compatible replacement that works with existing templates."

As I have been working now with some new Plone 5 sites, they load faster than before, even with thousands of pages of content. Filtering a content view with thousand object loads in split seconds.

I'm really looking forward on seeing how Plone 5 performs with our main website.

5. Bulk Content Editing

"Perform bulk operations to add multiple files and images at once, assign keywords, apply workflow, rename, cut, copy, and delete. Use query filters to quickly find, sort, reorder, and select specific content."

This is a huge improvement over previous versions. In our websites there are hundreds of thousands of content items. In some cases finding a certain file is difficult (see example below).

Over 1000 items in one folder. Plone 4.3.3. No way to filter.

And here is the new Contents view of Plone 5:

Plone 5 folder contents - totally revamped

In Plone 5 there are many, many new or improved features to folder content view:

• Upload multiple files
• Show and hide columns
• Change the amount of shown items
• Filter items by name (really fast and useful!)
• Rearrange columns 
• Bulk rename, copy, paste items
• Bulk change properties of dates or tags on items
• Filter through chosen items

Conclusion 

Here I have listed 5 most visible changes in Plone 5. And I haven't even mentioned Mosaic layout, which allows content editors to easily create customised layout views for content using just you browser!



But as said, there much more to Plone 5, so check out https://plone.com/5

Examples of Plone 5 sites

Even though most of these are in Finnish, I will provide links to some Plone 5 sites we now have:

• http://www.ecaart12.fi/
• https://www.jyu.fi/digipolku/
• https://staff.jyu.fi/ 

In addition to these, we have currently 3 other migrations underway and one preview-site to be published when the content is ready.

Looking forward to more Plone 5 migrations this year!


Cheers,
Rikupekka
plone-support@jyu.fi