We will go through the Volto training in about forty minutes.

To create a new Volto project, you need nvm and yarn, and then type the following:

$ npx @plone/create-volto-app my-volto-app

• You can override public resources like the logo, styling, etc, from Volto.
• Volto uses Semantic UI. For example, it uses the BreadCrumb component.
• Theming: in theme.config you use the Pastanaga theme by default, but can pick and choose other themes for some elements. You can do a lot of theming just by changing some variables in less. less instead of sass is needed by Semantic UI for conditional imports.
• You can override a component by copying the folder structure of that component from Volto to a customizations folder.
• We use yarn i18n to extract all translatable strings into .po and then .json files.
• Volto uses the DraftJS rich text editor. You can configure the buttons that are shown.
• As is usual in React, Volto uses actions and reducers based on Redux.

If you want to learn about Volto, see the full Volto training.

Question: why don't you use React hooks?

Answer: This was introduced one and a half year ago in React, allowing to use more functions instead of classes. Quite cool. But then we would have two ways to do the same thing, and we try not to do that in Volto. We try not to jump on those hooks right away. If we switch after a while, we want to switch the whole code base.

Question: how do React developers experience this?

Answer: we did some presentations in React conferences. Reaction is that it looks really nice, we get positive feedback. I wrote a small reference implementation of the needed backend in node, and was finished in a few days, so people can do that too.

I start with some community updates from the past year.

• We have six new foundation members: Christine, Thomas, Fulvio, Rikupekka, Kim, Stefania.
• We have added Zope to the Plone Foundation.
• 35 new core Plone committers.
• Nine funded sprints.
• There was a sprint in Barcelona this year from the Automization and Infrastructure team. They worked dist.plone.org and other core servers, rewriting Ansible scripts. They are looking to do two or three sprints next year, and they would like more people to join. You don't need to be an expert.
• Google Summer of Code: Gatsby and Guillotina work was done.
• Google Season of Docs: improved Volto documentation.
• A lot more people have been following Plone trainings. The trainings are available for free via https://training.plone.org. Right now 17 different courses available.
• Steve McMahon is stepping down from creating Plone installers. Please step up, and he will gladly help along in a transition period.

Python 3:

• Python 2.7 will not get security patches anymore from 1 January 2020. So for Plone it was really important to run on Python 3. That now works: first Zope was upgraded, and now Plone 5.2 runs on Python 2 and 3.
• Archetypes is now optional. It will not work at all in Python 3, so this is your wake-up call to update your code to use Dexterity.

Other changes in Plone 5.2:

• Plone 5.2 gives us plone.restapi. This means BYOFE: Bring Your Own Front End. So if you want, you can create an own front end to talk to Plone as backend.
• We have dropdown navigation.
• The login code was rewritten, to not use the old skin layers anymore, but use browser views. Much better testable.
• Theme improvements: static resource refactoring, removed old css/js resource registries, first main content then sidebar content.
• Integrated Products.RedirectionTool so you can manage redirects.

Other:

• Guillotina was started as a reimagining of Plone. It is really a separate project now. New version 5 has PostgreSQL indexing and search, pub/sub, there is Guillotina CMS.
• The new Pastanaga UI is evolving. We have a design document for Plone now.
• Volto: React-based front end that uses plone.restapi to talk to Plone. It uses the Pastanaga UI. Dramatically simplified rich text editor. It uses modern front end development, instead of building our own tools. We are improving the learning curve by removing Plone from the learning curve. That is awkward to say for me, but it brings more people in, front enders who can customize Volto. Volto uses JSX (JavaScript Expressions), Semantic UI. Significantly faster than our current built-in front end. And Volto works on both Plone and Guillotina. It is almost on par with the existing Plone UI, but some features are missing, like content rules and several control panels.

Volto helps with decoupled development. Plone is about keeping your data safe, having migrations. That is all backend stuff. We need a measured pace for this. The front end needs to evolve much faster, which Volto can do.

Challenges and open questions.

• Can we move to one content type, that can behave like an event, or a page or a folder? Does that solve problems or introduce new ones? Timo will talk about that.
• UI support: how much of the classic Plone UI do we keep around? Do we put all effort into Volto instead?
• What is "Plone" now? We have said: Plone is a CMS, a framework, a product, a community.
• We can say: Plone is the API contract: You can use Plone on top of Zope, or you can use Guillotina, you have an API on top of that, plus a front end. But what is important is this contract: security, flexibility, extensibility, user experience.

Since the end of 2017, there is a new version 4.0 of collective.recipe.backup. There are lots of changes since version 3.1. Let's see some of the highlights.

Sprint document is on Google Docs.

• Pyramid: a few more documentation updates.
• Plone and Zope 4. Down to seven failing tests, very good. Everything is merged, the master branch of CMFPlone is using Zope4, the PLIP job is gone.
• Plone to Python 3. We decides to use six, which is a dependency of Zope anyway. Lots of PRs. Experimenting with sixer, which 'sixifies' the code automatically. GenericSetup: slowly working through incompatibilities.
• Plone rest api. Some issues solved. plone.app.event stores start and end date timezone aware, and the rest of the dates are timezone naive, and there is no hint in the schema on what is naive or not, so that gives us problems, evaluating how to fix it.
• VueJS SDK. Implementing traversal. Creating edit forms out of schema. You can add views with a plugin. Automatic testing with Travis is setup. Next: component. Editor.
• Pastanaga Angular. plone/pastanaga-angular. Demo time! mr.developer work done.
• Pastanaga.io, creating mocks.
• Guillotina, made pastanaga-angular work with guillotina, you can login, browse content, navigation. guillotina_cms layer. Robot framework tests, with robotframework.guillotina for test setup.
• Plone CLI. I can show you. Main setup is in place. plonecli create addon collective.todo; plonecli build; plonecli serve. Or in one command: plonecli create addon collective.todo build serve.
• WSGI in plone.recipe.zope2instance. All merged. Python 3 compatible.
• websauna. Pyramid 1.9 support is 100% done. In another week we can release a new version.
• pas.plugins.ldap. Problem that tests are not running on Travis. We now know what is happen, but not yet why, when half a year ago it worked. We got LDAP running locally on Mac, so it becomes easier to test and fix.
• docs.plone.org upgrade guide, just came in, documented one PLIP.
• JSON Schema Builder with JavaScript. Demo time! You can click a form together, save it as json, and view it with Angular. From there you could save or mail the filled in data. You can do validation. We have collective.easyform which is Plone only, but this is more general: it's just json on the back end and front end. [Very impressive!]
• Update XML-RPC to support dexterity. First pull request done.
• Mixed bag. Removed all robot screen shots from documentation, they live under CMFPlone now, making it easier for others to write and test. Mixed results from Chrome and PhantomJS, also changing from version to version. With that, for papyrus, our documentation build system, we no longer need to build Plone.

Sprint document is on Google Docs.

• Working on moving Pylons to the Plone Foundation. Tedious, painstaking work. PRs for documentation and some bugs.
• Eric made coredev branch 5.2. Merged Zope 4 PLIP changes into that. Same amount of failures as yesterday, working on getting the build green. Work on porting databases, some mosaic problems are being fixed, most add-ons are okay. Wrote documentation for some code changes you have to do.
• Plone to Python 3. We tried to fix all the imports in all the Plone packages that break on Python 3. Long list of PRs in the Google Doc. GenericSetup Python 3 branch that we first got to work on Python 2 again. Working through the usual string issues. Some semantic issues for PropertyManagers that we need to fix in Zope first. Gil made a list of which packages are not Python 3 yet, already in June, we ask him to update it.
• Plone rest api. Problem with root users. There is a PR which disables that, but I have a workaround ready now.
• VueJS SDK. plone.vuejs package, but may be renamed. Just basic stuff. Test setup. Started on some features, like traversal.
• Pastanaga Angular. Travis setup. Universal. A mr.developer for Angular. Login form is done. Work on API and SDK.
• Pastanaga React. Struggling with several issues.
• Pastanaga.io, talking about license, fund raising.
• Guillotina some work done, PR.
• Plone CLI. Front end working. Fixing stuff in bobtemplates.
• WSGI in plone.recipe.zope2instance. PR merged into master. Should be there in Plone 5.2. Support in the core buildout for the WSGI parts: wsgi.cfg config file. Basically done.
• websauna. Pyramid 1.9 support is 80% done. Work on cookie cutter template to support Docker images. Will become easier to startup.
• plone.org improvements, made mockups to make packages more visible. Set of icons will be reviewed. Should be discussed with website team. Make the listing more emotional.
• pas.plugins.ldap. Fred chatted with Jens how we can merge back improvements from Asko and Zest. Documentation, that might be later merged to docs.plone.org. Also some collective.recipe.solr work.
• docs.plone.org upgrade guide, worked on documenting the PLIPs, restructuring a bit
• JSON Schema Builder with JavaScript. Browser view with drag and drop, save in dexterity object. Angular app that traverses to the end point of the schema. Missing is the order of the fields which is not correct, and actions.
• Mixed bag. Fixes for docs.plone.org, new theme release with better version dropdown. Meeting with Manabu to talk about Tokyo. Server consolidation planning. Contributor agreements signed, 2.5 of them.