Plone is:

• a CMS
  • create content: pages, folders, images
  • workflow: keep private or make public
  • share with other users/groups: allow to edit or view
• a community:
  • Plone Foundation
  • companies, large institutions, individuals
  • teams: release, security, marketing, etc
  • conferences
• a process:
  • PLIPs: PLone Improvement Proposals
  • Pull requests: reviews, tests
  • Sprints: week of planning and coding
  • Release schedule

Backend:

• written in Python
• build on Zope
• data stored in object database
• add-ons: adapt and extend

Two frontends:

• Classic UI:
  • integrated in backend
  • html rendered in Python
  • plus CSS / JS  (Bootstrap 5)
• Volto:
  • NodeJS
  • React
  • https://demo.plone.org

Challenges

• Adopt Python best practices
• Adopt latest Javascript/Node improvements
• Be interesting and maintainable
• Keep inventing nice stuff!

Links

• docs.plone.org
• training.plone.org

Bonnie Tyler Sprint

On 12 August 2026 there is a total solar eclipse that can be seen from Valencia, Spain. So we organise a sprint there.

This conference

We had 291 participants, 234 in person and 57 online. 13 Brazilian states (that is all of them), 14 countries.

24.5 percent women, was 13% in 2013, so that has gone up, but we are not there yet. Thank you to PyLadies and Django Girls for making this happen.

We had more than 80 presenters, about 30 lightning talks, lots of talk in the hall ways.

Thanks also to the team!

Ramiro Luz: Yoga time

Yoga exercise.

Rikupekka: University case student portal

We have a student portal at the university. But mostly:

Welcome to Jyväskylä university in Finald for Plone conference 2025, October 13-19!

Jakob: Beethovensprint

26-30 mei 2025 in Bonn, Duitsland.

Afterwards, on May 30 and June 1 there will be FedCon in Bonn, a SciFi convention.

Piero/Victor: BYOUI

Add-ons first development with @plone/registry. See https://plone-registry.readthedocs.io/

It allows for development that is framework agnostic, so it is not only for Plone. It is around configuration that can be extended and injected, which is tricky in most javascript frameworks.

Imagine it.

Ana Dulce: 3D printing

For a difficult model I had trust the process, it took a week, but it worked.

Renan & Iza: Python Brasil

We organised the Python Brasil conference from 16 to 23 October this year in Rio de Janeiro.

Next year 21-27 October in São Paulo.

Erico: Python Cerrado

31 July to 2 August 2025 is the next Python Cerrado conference.

Link to talk information on Plone conference website.

I work for the Clean Clothes Campaign: https://cleanclothes.org/

After three large disasters in factories in 2012 and 2013 with over 1000 deaths, it took three years to get an agreement with clothes manufacturers to get 30 million dollar compensation. It does not bring lives back, but it helps the survivors.

See Open Supply Hub for open data that we collected, for checking which brands are produced in which factories.

Documenting history matters. Stories must be told.

The global closing industry is worth around 1.8 trillion dollars, in a country that would put them on the 12th place in the world. 75 million workers.

Our strongest weapon: backlinks. We have links from OECD, UN, wikipedia, school curriculum, books. Especially those last two don't change ever, so you should never change urls.

Plone: enable the sitemap, please, why not by default? Create a good robots.txt. I weekly check Google Search console, looking for broken links. Tag early, tag often, great tool, even if you have an AI do it.

Our website: started 1998 written in Notepad, 2004 Dreamweaver, 2006 Bluefish, 2010 Joomla, 2013 Plone 4, 2020 Castle CMS (opinionated distribution of Plone, but does not really exist anymore) 2024 Plone 6 with Volto Light Theme (work in progress). Thank you kitconcept for all the help, especially Jonas.

Migrations are painful. Along the years we used wget to csv to SQL to csv, Python script, "Franken-mogrifier", collective.exportimport.

Lessons learned: stable urls are awesome, migrations are painful. Please don't try to salvage CSS from your old site, just start fresh in your new system. Do not try to migrate composite pages or listings.

What if your website does not provide an export? Use wget, still works and is better than httrack. sed/awk/regex are your friend. archivebox (WARC).

Document your steps for your own sanity.

To manage json, jq or jello can be used. sq is a Swiss knife for json/sql/csv. emuto is a hybrid between jq and GraphQL.

Normalize import/export. We have `plone.exportimport` in core now.

In the future I would like a plone exporter script that accepts a regex and exports only matching pages. Switch backends: ZODB, relstorage, nick, quantum-db. Sitewide search/replace/sed. Sneakernet is useful in difficult countries where you cannot send data over the internet: so export to a usb stick.

A backup is only a backup if it regularly gets restored so you know that it works.

• Keeping content and URL stability is a superpower.
• Assuming that export/import/backup/restore/migration are rare occurrences, is wrong.
• Quick export/import is very useful.

Do small migrations, treat it as maintenance. Don't be too far behind. Large migrations one every five years will be costly. Do a small migration every year. Do your part. Clients should also do their part, by budgeting this yearly. That is how budgeting works. Use every iteration to review custom code.

Make your sites live long and prosper.

Link to talk information on Plone conference website.

Sorry, I ran out of time trying to set up https://coolify.io

So let's talk about another problem. Running applications (stacks) in containers is the future. Well: abstraction and isolation is the future, and containers is the current phase.

I am on the Plone A/I team, with Paul, Kim, Erico. All senior sysadmins, so we kept things running. In 2022 we worked on containerisation. Kubernetes was the kool kid then, but Docker Swarm was easier. Checkout Erico's training with new cookieplone templates.

Doing devops well is hard. You have a high workload, but still need to keep learning new stuff to keep up with what is changing.

I want to plug Coolify, which is a full open source product. "Self-hosting with super powers." The main developer, Andras Bacsal, believes in open source and 'hates' pay by usage cloud providers with a vengeance.

Coolify is still docker swarm. We also want Kubernetes support. But we still need sysadmins. Someone will still need to install coolify, and keep it updated.

I would like to run an online DevOps course somewhere January-March 2025. 4-6 meetings of 2 hours, maybe Friday afternoon. Talk through devops and sysadmin concepts, show docker swarm, try coolify, etc.

Link to talk information on Plone conference website.

I am studying computer science. This summer I have participated in the Google Summer of Code for Plone. Thank you to mentors Paul, Roeland and Mike!

I have built several full-stack web apps with React, but am new to open source.

What is RSS? It is Really Simple Syndication. It is used by websites to publish updated information, such as blog or news. It lets users decide what they read every day, instead of algorithms.

In Plone the RSS feed should use a catalog query to filter contents, for example a feed of science articles or of events.

For an RSS feed content type we could use a collection behavior or a blocks behavior with a listing block. The listing block is the way to go for Volto. So I did that. Plus extra fields like maximum title length and maximum description length.

I created a view component for the content type. Important is the Express middleware with which we got information from the backend.

We decided on `rss` as Node package for the feed. We looked at another newer one called `feed`, but it did not work for us or was missing features.

There were challenges for me as person new to Plone. Do I really understand the code? Often the answer is: no. For example ZCML? i18n? XML files in the profiles? There is a really nested structure. Create a new project, then you have backend / src / rss / src / rss, at least something very deeply nested. It was always confusing to me as I did not really know what should end up in git or in a release. The worst is that I don't know what are the most important files.

And what if my code fails, it was hard to understand errors on the front end. There are just too many things that may be the source of the error.

Another challenge: what if I want to create something new? The training lets you learn by example. But what does each line of the example code actually do? Are there other options?

Missing documentation: how do prevent the user from removing the title or rss block? We found out about initialBlocks per content type. And prevent adding new blocks? There is a feature disableNewBlocks, that could be set on an individual block, but what about doing this for all instances of this content type?

An overview of the code base would be good. How different components are connected, how different files work together. A guide about how to approach the source code, what files I should look at first.

For developers new to Plone: the source code is your friend, the Plone community is helpful, but be specific in the questions you ask, and tell what you have already tried.

Source code:

• https://github.com/collective/volto-rss-provider
• https://github.com/collective/rss-provider
• https://github.com/collective/rss-receiver
• https://github.com/collective/volto-rss-receiver