Plone A Content Management System

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PloneA Content Management System
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Agenda

• The issue
• What is Plone?
• Why Plone?
• What can Plone do?
• NCI-DCEG Experience
• What is the cost?
• Who is using Plone?
• Books

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The Issue

• Large studies that involve multiple disciplines,
  centers and investigators
• Goal to communicate more rapidly with more
  people
• Solution Collaboration Portals using Plone

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What is Plone?

• Open source content management system (CMS)
• Freely downloadable software under a general
  public license (GPL) - No license fee required
  - Download from http//plone.org
• Plone is standard- follows standards for
  usability and accessibility compliant with
  WAI-AAA US Section 508
• Widely tested in browsers on multiple platforms

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Why Plone?

• Content Management features
• Access via standard Web browsers
• WYSIWYG editing interface
• Tools to create/control basic HTML features,
  including tables, font, form elements, image
  insertion
• Support for multilingual content
• Integration of content or documents produced
  through other Web authoring applications (e.g.,
  Dreamweaver)

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Why Plone? (2)

• Workflow tool- allows for editorial approval
  before publication
• Searching - fast, full-text searching
• Comes with Dublin core metadata standards
• 100 add-on products - most are open source

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NCI-DCEG Experience

• Collaboration portal features
• - group distribution lists
• - message board- calendar with the capacity to
  embed meeting agendas and minutes
• - serves as a repository for many essential
  documents, such as protocols and published
  papers- allows roles to be assigned to users
• example manager, reviewer or member

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NCI-DCEG Experience

• Intranet using Plone
• Pros- Site administrators add content- Easy to
  keep content updated- Encourages content
  production- Leads to more people using the
  intranet actively- Strong focus on end-user
  usability- Most users need minimal training
• Cons- Customer support is weaker than for
  commercial products- Security is complex-
  Content publishing is harder without knowledge of
  HTML

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What was the cost?

• Require a server Unix, Windows or Solaris
• Two weeks of programmer time that included-
  requirements analysis- set up of the server-
  set up of a template portal site- training of
  users
• The approximate cost was 10,000 (excluding the
  cost of the server)

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Who Uses Plone?

• Oxfam America - http//www.oxfamamerica.org/
• United Nationshttp//www.undp.org/
• NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratoryhttp//www.jpl.nasa
  .gov/
• NASAs Mars Rover Websitehttp//mars.telascience.
  org/home

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Try Plone

• A Plone demonstration site is available at
• http//demo.plone.org

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Books

• Definitive Guide to PloneAndy McKay, APress
• Building Websites with PloneCameron Cooper,
  Packt Publishing
• Plone LiveMichel Pelletier, Munwar Shariff,
  Sourcebeat
• Plone Content Management EssentialsJulie C.
  Meloni, SAMS

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DEMO PLONE SITE