3 Things We Love About Plone 4
Fresh off launching one of the first Plone 4 sites in the U.S., we're thrilled to share our take on the greatness of this latest release of Plone. Though hardly comprehensive, these are our favorite aspects of Plone 4. (See the full feature list.)
1. Plone 4 is beautiful and easier to skin
Low-end content management systems like Wordpress have been easy to skin for years. Plone, renowned for its security, scalability and robust document management, has always required more sophisticated technical skills to wrangle out a gorgeous design.
Until now.
Plone 4 now installs with an elegant sophisticated skin called Sunburst.
Clean and sleek, it's a beautiful starting point for a very powerful system.
But if your project demands something more, we've also found that Plone 4 is now easier to customize thanks to a simpler HTML structure, cleaned-up CSS, and the Deco.gs system. Deco.gs is a lightweight grid framework that eases CSS layout and positioning. Watch for a Deco theming UI coming soon in Plone 5.
Learn more:
- Theming Plone 4 (Part 1 | Part 2)
- Upgrading Plone 3 themes for Plone 4
2. Plone 4 offers more options for image scaling & cropping
Custom thumbnail sizes or "featured story" images are a VERY common request by our clients. Before, we were limited to pre-existing scales but now in Plone 4, you can specify any image size as well as options for auto-cropping.
This makes automated content re-purposing super easy for both us and our publishers. Simple change but a big impact on Plone end-users.
3. Plone 4 supports publishers with TinyMCE
Years before other CMSs were supporting publishers with an out-of-the box WYSIWIG content editor, Plone shipped with the Kupu editor.
Now with Plone 4, you'll get TinyMCE which provides a cleaner and more recognizable set of content editing options -- perfect for non-technical publishers. And if you're upgrading from Plone 3 with a cadre of users already comfy with Kupu, Plone still includes the old editor as an option, making upgrades less daunting for your publishers.
Check out the Plone 4 documentation for content creators and managers to get detailed instructions on using Plone and TinyMCE.
For developers, TinyMCE makes it easy to provide custom styles for publishers throughout your site. Plus you can also extend TinyMCE with this plugin for templates and snippets.
What other people are saying about Plone 4
- Plone 4: Best Yet of the Best CMS by Kim N Campbell
- 5 Things That Rock About Plone 4 by Jon Stahl
- Web CMS Plone 4 Improves Performance, User Experience by CMS Wire
- How fast is Plone 4 in real life? by Matt Hamilton
- Ten lesser-known improvements in Plone 4 by Matt Glick
Congrats to the Plone 4 team on a gorgeous release. See it in action at the Plone 4 demo site or check out the official Plone 4 feature list.
