Plone Content Management Essentials (Paperback)

by Julie C. Meloni (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Plone Content Management Essentials is a practical and thorough hands-on guide to using the powerful open-source content website publishing system, Plone. With this book as your guide, you will thoroughly understand how and when to utilize Plone, as well as how to install, configure and maintain a Plone-based website. You'll also be able to download the latest Plone installation from our website so that you can apply what you learn in the book. No prior knowledge of Plone is required to learn from this book, but it will enhance what you takeaway.

About the Author

Julie C. Meloni is the technical director for i2i Interactive, a multimedia company located in Los Altos, California. She has been developing web-based applications since the web first saw the light of day and remembers the excitement surrounding the first GUI web browser. She has authored several books and articles on web-based programming languages and database topics, most notably PHP, MySQL and Apache. You can find translations of her work in several languages, including Chinese, Danish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and even Serbian. Although Julie can't read these languages, she thinks that's very cool. Julie is also a course developer and instructor at Sessions.edu Online School of Design, where she teaches students the wonders of dynamic websites.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 258 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1 edition (October 16, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672326876
• ISBN-13: 978-0672326875
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #842,126 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Getting started..." kind of a book, November 29, 2004

By	Ales Kavsek (Ljubljana, Slovenia) - See all my reviews

I bought this book together with McKay "The Definitive Guide to Plone" and all I can say is that they fit together nicely.
In the old days when software was delivered to you in a nice box with accompanying manuals, one of them was hopefully titled as "Getting started...", "Introduction to..." or "Quick guide to...". Julie's "Plone Content Management Essentials" is by all means *that* kind of the book in a 'missing box' for Plone.

As a complete Plone (Zope) newbie on my way to migrate some stuff from Movable Type intranet site, I needed quick, concise guide to get the general feeling about Plone features and the level of complexity involved (I already knew that Zope behind the Plone is a "beast" in it's own if compared to simple packages like MT) . With just 200+ pages this book helped me grasp the basic concepts behind the Plone CMS in a way, that I could build my prototype site in a few days. The chapters that I liked the most are chapter "4. Additional Plone Elements" describing Plone add-ons of immediate interest to me (CMFBoard, CMFPhotoAlbum and CMFWeblog) and chapter's 5 and 6 on customizing plone and implementing custom skin. The only objection that I have about the book is Appendix A., imho it's completely useless attempt on introduction to python language (it would make more sense to just publish the links to python online resources).

Book is geared towards complete Plone newbie's, even non-techies will not be easily lost, thanks to step-by-step approach and numerous screenshots. Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend that you also consider McKay "The Definitive Guide to Plone" which is in my opinion the most complete book about Plone on the market (but you'll certainly need more than a few days to digest it). Thank you for reading this review!

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Make wikis and blogs, November 2, 2004

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A popular open source Content Management System. Meloni suggests here in her book why it has proved so useful. If you read her book and have some familiarity with Microsoft's Office suite, then you can see what Plone offers. The various Microsoft applications, like MSWord, have very rich toolkits. But each application essentially handles single documents. Meloni shows that Plone's remit is at a higher level of organisation. More to do with workflow between several users.

Plus, these users need not be in one physical location. Plone lets a group distributed over the Internet work together. Plone can help enable new types of dispersed "multinationals" of just a few people.

The book also has merit in showing how to use Plone to construct wikis and blogs. Two topical subjects. And very closely related. So both are described in the same chapter. Daresay that some of you will find this the most useful section of the book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good introductory book, January 26, 2005

By	D. Messer (MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A good introduction to Plone. But, there are a few typographical errors in code samples that will send you on minor troubleshooting trips. The author also covers some add-ins that cause errors when you try to remove them, again, causing you to do some troubleshooting. Not all bad. A little troubleshooting helps you learn the system.