News & views
What’s happening in and around WebLion, plus what we think about web-related subjects. Products in the pipeline, upcoming deadlines and more.
Posted Oct 13, 2009
Portlets gone wild with ContentWellPortlets 2.0.1
This new release adds the ability to add portlets to the footer area. It also has 6 portlet managers per area. This means 20 total portlet managers including the 2 on the sides that ship with plone.
Posted Sep 17, 2009
Plone 4 – An interview with Zope News
Jan Ulrich Hasecke interviews me for Zope News.
Posted Aug 31, 2009
Web Services API for Plone Alpha 3 Release
Details the release of the wsapi4plone.core package and the plans for future releases. The final report of the AtomPub for Plone Google Summer of Code project.
Posted Aug 28, 2009
Content editing and creation in Plone is faster with archetypes.schematuning
Some bench marks of content editing and creation in Plone with and without archetypes.schematuning installed.
Posted Jun 16, 2009
Calendar sprint wrap-up
Our sprint yielded 2 lovely UI improvements for Plone4Artists Calendar.
Posted Jun 16, 2009
Namespace packages: replies to replies
Clarifications, your comments addressed, and why I still think we should lay off the namespace packages
Posted Jun 08, 2009
Stop abusing namespace packages
Plone has been in a nosedive toward unchecked complexity lately. Here's one easy, high-yield problem we can solve.
Posted May 17, 2009
Registration deadline approaching fast for Plone Symposium East and associated training
Register by May 18. Training starts May 26. Symposium starts May 28.
Posted May 13, 2009
Plone Symposium East registration deadline extended
Your last chance to register for talks and training just got last-chancier.
Posted May 08, 2009
3 days left to register for Symposium East
A few big dates coming up at Penn State
Posted May 08, 2009
Repoze.BFG Tutorial
Are you a Python web developer who thinks there might be some great stuff hidden away in Zope but you consider it inaccessible to you because you feel that Zope imposes too many foreign concepts for your tastes? Are you a more-or-less happy Zope developer that has the nagging feeling that much of Zope is unnecessary "baggage" on your current project? Maybe you're a Plone developer who feels that Plone is unsuitable for one of your current projects because it's too complicated? WebLion is hosting this training on May 27, 2009 prior to the Plone Symposium East 2009. Register by May 11.
Posted May 08, 2009
Managing Newsletters in Plone
I have found that Plone out of the box can handle most requirements for online newsletters...
Posted May 05, 2009
(Update: link to sprints corrected) Alexander Limi to Open Plone Symposium East 2009
Alexander Limi, co-founder of Plone will open the festivities at the Plone Symposium East 2009. Alex's presentation will focus on Plone 4.0 features and future directions.
Posted May 05, 2009
Training at Penn State: Agile Methods, Python Programming
WebLion is hosting the Plone Symposium East 2009 on May 28 and 29 and training on May 26-27. In addition to Zope and Plone training, there are workshops in agile methods and Python programming led by professional trainers, at very low cost and open to everyone. Register by May 11.
Posted May 04, 2009
Training at Plone Symposium East 2009: a week left to register
5 topics to choose from. Get your laptops ready!
Posted Apr 19, 2009
Frequently Asked Questions About Plone Symposium East's Earlybird Registration
A short FAQ.
Posted Apr 18, 2009
Just 3 Days Left to Get the Earlybird
Just 3 days left to get the earlybird discount for Plone Symposium East 2009
Posted Apr 16, 2009
Earlybird registration for Plone Symposium East closes soon
Register by April 20 to get a discount. Schedule now available.
Posted Apr 16, 2009
WebServerAuth 1.2 makes login_form do the right thing
No longer can the “Log in to add comments” button present a misleading login form.
Posted Apr 03, 2009
Sponsor Plone Symposium East 2009
Sponsorships help lower registration costs for training and presentations, and help support development sprints.
Posted Apr 03, 2009
Less than 3 weeks to get earlybird registration discount at Plone Symposium East
Register by April 20 and get $$ off. Wait until April 21 and pay full price.
Posted Mar 26, 2009
"No, seriously. Don't touch that."
Prevent editors from monkeying with the display menu.
Posted Mar 25, 2009
WebLion Hosting 1.1 Released
If you use WebLion's hosting service, your server has just been updated with the latest tweaks for security, performance, and convenience.
Posted Mar 24, 2009
Plone Sites on Flickr
The Plone Sites Flickr group invites you to post screen shots of Plone sites you have built and/or that you administer.
Posted Mar 23, 2009
Propose a talk for Plone Symposium East today
Speakers get $150 off registration at this annual gathering of Plonistas. Deadline for talk proposals is approaching fast.
Posted Mar 13, 2009
Stuff I'll never find time to blog about properly
WebServerAuth updated, svn.plone.org updated, and CacheableRedirects speeds up your 301s
Posted Mar 04, 2009
Subversion 1.5 on svn.plone.org
The server is now running 1.5.1. Merge-tracking will come in the next few days.
Posted Mar 03, 2009
Darling, say yes... please do!
No, no, not that kind of proposal! Send us your proposals for talks and training sessions at Plone Symposium East 2009. Speakers get a big discount on registration.
Posted Feb 24, 2009
Tweaks to #plone IRC logging
Crank up that signal-to-noise ratio! Status messages aren’t logged anymore, and [nolog] messages are subtler.
Posted Feb 23, 2009
Plone Symposium East 2009: registration open
Whether you are a website manager, consultant, core developer, or some other kind of Plonista, this event in late May 2009 is for you! Meet new contacts, brainstorm with like-minded people, learn from a wide variety of presentations, and share your experiences and expertise. Propose a talk or training session before March 23, and register by April 20 for an earlybird discount.
Posted Feb 17, 2009
An (opt-in) #plone logging experiment
Help the hapless searching newbies of the world by opting to having your questions and answers on the #plone IRC channel logged for future reference.
Posted Feb 16, 2009
Minor releases: Redirection Tool and Subversion Location
Fixed display problems in both these wares.
Posted Feb 16, 2009
bigreplace: Regex find-and-replace for files bigger than RAM
grep and sed choke on enormous files. This doesn’t as much.
Posted Feb 10, 2009
Forcing viewlets to order properly.
From the Department of Putting-this-out-there-so-someone-doesn't-have-to-spend-an-hour-fighting-with-the-same-problem.
Posted Jan 16, 2009
Weekly wiki #4—Theming
Create A Plone Three Theme Product, Plone Three Where Is What, and Create Your Own Custom Navigation Portlet
Posted Jan 13, 2009
Green IT at Educause Regional in Philadelphia
Green IT is getting a lot of attention these days. A recent session at the 2009 Educause Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in Philadelphia presented an engaging panel that discussed this subject with four presenters discussing efforts on what their organizations are doing to contribute to being Green within their IT organizations.
Posted Jan 12, 2009
Viewlets: barriers beyond borders
The Gloworm product makes it much easier for those new to Plone to identify and customize viewlets. But for Plone newbies, many barriers remain to understanding what viewlets are, why they are so useful, and how to manipulate them. Here are some of the pain points we've encountered.
Posted Jan 12, 2009
AnonymousCommenting now available
A quick little product to set up anonymous commenting on your site.
Posted Jan 09, 2009
WebLion Reps Discuss Assessment Management System
WebLion discusses Assessment Management System at 2009 Educause Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in Philadelphia.
Posted Jan 05, 2009
OHR Uses WebLion CMS
Office of Human Resources (OHR) have adopted WebLion as primary CMS for redesign efforts.
Posted Dec 26, 2008
Agricultural Sciences joins growing WebLion partner list
College of Agricultural Sciences have joined the WebLion partnership and have ambitious goals to reinvent the Web experience down on the farm and in the college
Posted Dec 22, 2008
Valor and icy drinks at the Faculty/Staff Directory sprint
FSD 3.0 will harness viewlets and other Zope 3 technologies.
Posted Dec 22, 2008
New members added to WebLion team
Kevin Kalupson and Michael Miller join WebLion Development Group.
Posted Dec 19, 2008
Weekly wiki #3—System administration
Proxy Apache to Zope, Secure Zope, and Delegate Authentication
Posted Dec 19, 2008
WebLion members to hold key roles in Plone 4 development
WebLion team members to hold key positions for Plone 4.0 release development. WebLion members Eric Steele and Erik Rose will play important roles in the next major version of Plone.
Posted Dec 17, 2008
Easier theming with Content Well Portlets
The ContentWellPortlets product lets you put portlets into the main section of your page, above and/or below your content. This provides a handy way of creating distinctive page layouts without having to write new page templates.
Posted Dec 15, 2008
Find your invisible cursor
A quick solution for the missing terminal input caused by control-c'ing while in a pdb prompt.
Posted Dec 12, 2008
Weekly wiki #2—Beginning Plone development
Core Software for Development, Subversion Basics, and Unit Tests
Posted Dec 05, 2008
Theme switching by URL, folder, page, etc.
When we want to use two or more themes in the same Plone 3.1 site, we need some way of switching between the themes. Mobilize currently uses theme switching by URL. This approach can be modified to offer different themes in different folders (subskinning, anyone?).
Posted Dec 05, 2008
To war!
Fear not, fair FacultyStaffDirectory extender authors—your deliverance from the tyrant templates is at hand.
Posted Dec 03, 2008
WebServerAuth 1.1 saves money on SSL certs
Now you can specify where the login link and challenge handler take you, meaning you don’t need a separate SSL cert for each domain.
Posted Nov 21, 2008
Kill 10.5’s “Are you sure you want to open it?” dead
Turn off those obnoxious “This app was downloaded from the internet” warnings OS X 10.5 throws up.
Posted Nov 20, 2008
GloWorm 1.0b1 now available
The first version of GloWorm that I'd be willing to use on one of my own sites is now ready for download.
Posted Nov 18, 2008
Trac plugin makes checkouts easier
Subversion Location plugin adds a handy repository link from Browse Source tab.
Posted Oct 24, 2008
International FacultyStaffDirectory team gels at Plone Conference
Developers from around the world met for the first time to eat pizza, make cross-cultural gaffes, and kick 2.1 out the door.
Posted Oct 20, 2008
4 out of 5 developers agree: XML configuration is teh fail
XML is not like violence: if it isn’t working, the answer is not to use more.
Posted Oct 08, 2008
Is opportunity hidden in crisis?
Markets are stirring up trouble everywhere. In this chaotic environment, there may be the seeds of opportunity.
Posted Sep 19, 2008
GloWorm 0.1 alpha 6 and upcoming sprint
A new ui-focused release of GloWorm is available for your tinkering pleasure.
Posted Sep 10, 2008
WebServerAuth aims to replace apachepas and AutoMemberMaker
The first beta release is free of known bugs and ready for abuse. Please squash my dreams!
Posted Sep 04, 2008
Work at WebLion
Know Python, Zope, or Plone? Join us for interesting work and good company!
Posted Aug 26, 2008
Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences—our newest WebLion partner!
Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences has now joined the WebLion partnership as our latest edition.
Posted Aug 22, 2008
OPP joins WebLion partnership
Office of Physical Plant has joined the WebLion partnership.
Posted Aug 20, 2008
Goodbye audiences, hello interlocutors
For years we have used the term "audience" as shorthand for "those people (a) at whom our websites are aimed, and/or (b) who are actually visiting the sites". But this term isn't really appropriate in today's world of interactive media: we need a better one.
Posted Jul 30, 2008
Explore Debian dependencies with debtree
debtree is a nifty little hack that builds package dependency diagrams.
Posted Jul 24, 2008
Subversion 1.5 has landed
WebLion’s Subversion server now runs 1.5.0. Happy merging!
Posted Jul 21, 2008
FreakyWiki: a simple wiki banged out in Grok
A restructured text wiki written in about a day by two guys who never used Grok (or even pure Zope 3) before
Posted Jul 11, 2008
GloWorm 0.1-alpha 5
An updated screencast showing the current state of GloWorm. Now with viewlet moving!
Posted Jul 02, 2008
Plone does redirects now?!
Plone 3 notices when you move content and creates redirects automatically.
Posted Jun 26, 2008
CSSManager hits 2000 downloads!
CSSManager, developed by WebLion programmer Rob Porter and Ian Anderson of the University of North Carolina, has been extremely popular with the Plone community.
Posted Jun 17, 2008
Migrating your site to Plone—the screencast
Catherine Williams, Rose Pruyne, Jeanne Spicer, and Joe DeLuca describe their experiences with migrating Web sites to Plone.
Posted Jun 13, 2008
Poster from Penn State Web Conference
In case you missed it at the Penn State Web Conference, here’s a copy of WebLion’s poster.
Posted Jun 09, 2008
An example proposal for adopting Plone
I am sharing the following example proposal for adopting Plone at the university department level. If you are striving to convince your organization to adopt Plone, feel free to make use of any part of this material for your own justification.
Posted Jun 07, 2008
WebLion website revamped
New architecture, new content and new visual styling. We've also migrated platform to Plone 3.
Posted Jun 05, 2008
What's next for Plone in Education?
For discussions at the Plone Symposium in New Orleans, it seems a good time to review the outcomes of strategic planning the education community did at Ploneability and Plone Symposium East
Posted Jun 05, 2008
Get sociable at the Penn State web conference
If you didn't make the deadline for conference proposals at this year's Penn State Web Conference 2008, it's not too late to present your ideas and thoughts.
Posted Jun 04, 2008
Sessions are evil
My comprehensive, cathartic condemnation of that carbuncle on the countenance of the stateless web
Posted May 23, 2008
GloWorm 0.1-alpha1 now available
The first semi-release of GloWorm is now available in alpha form.
Posted May 14, 2008
New certificate on weblion.psu.edu
We got a new HTTPS certificate. If connecting to our server for a Subversion commit, you may be prompted to accept the new certificate.
Posted May 13, 2008
vmstat and tail make a great sandwich
To diagnose a slow web server, interleave vmstat and tail.
Posted Jan 24, 2008
Composition program to use WebLion to improve communications
It's official: the Composition Program in the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts has now joined the WebLion Partnership.
Posted Jan 17, 2008
Computer Science and Engineering joins WebLion
The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, in the College of Engineering, is the latest Penn State group to join the WebLion Partnership.
Posted Dec 13, 2007
Huck Institutes develops app for evaluating graduate applications
Huck Institutes has developed a 'back office" application for evaluating potential applicants for graduate study.
Posted Nov 18, 2007
Plone for Education: "Let's get organized!"
A group of colleges and universities discuss how Plone in Education needs to get organized.
Posted Nov 18, 2007
WebLion and Ploneability Higher Ed
WebLion team presents at Ploneability Higher Ed Conference: "The WebLion Project: Bringing Open Source to Higher Education Institutions".
Posted Oct 31, 2007
WebLion at EDUCAUSE: new collaborations
The WebLion team made new connections and had good feedback while attending the 2007 EDUCAUSE annual conference.
Posted Oct 29, 2007
Meteorology joins WebLion partnership
Penn State's Department of Meteorology in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences has officially joined the WebLion partnership.
Posted Oct 11, 2007
WebLion team welcomes College of Communications
Penn State's College of Communications has formally joined the WebLion Partnership.
Posted Aug 22, 2007
WebLion/Plone security: we're solid
In cooperation with the ITS Security Operations and Services and WebLion partner College of Information Sciences and Technology, a comprehensive scan of security vulnerabilities shows that when properly installed, WebLion/Plone/Zope is a secure Web platform.
