Professional Plone Development 98
Michael J. Ross writes "Among the hundreds of content management systems (CMSs) available for building Web sites, Plone may not be the most popular; but for the majority of experienced Python developers, it is without equal. This is partly due to Plone being one of the few major CMSs written in Python, and partly due to its powerful extensibility. Customizing and extending Plone, however, are not for the faint of heart. Fortunately, help is at hand, in Professional Plone Development, a book written by seasoned Plone developer Martin Aspeli." Read below for the rest Of Michael's review.
Professional Plone Development was put out by Packt Publishing, on 26 September 2007, under the ISBNs 1847191983 and 978-1847191984. On the book's Web page, visitors can order a copy of the book (more on this later), download the sample source code found in the book, submit feedback, ask questions of the publisher, and download a sample chapter — specifically, Chapter 2, which presents the case study used by the author. For anyone who wants to get the most out of this book, downloading and working through the sample code would be extremely valuable.
| Professional Plone Development | |
| author | Martin Aspeli |
| pages | 420 |
| publisher | Packt Publishing |
| rating | 7/10 |
| reviewer | Michael J. Ross |
| ISBN | 1847191983 |
| summary | A practical exploration of how to extend the CMS Plone. |
The book's material is organized into 19 chapters, spanning 420 pages — despite what is reported on the publisher's Web page, which as of this writing indicates that the book comprises 300 pages. The book's chapters are grouped into four parts. The first one, the briefest, sets the stage for what follows, by presenting a context for Plone development, including the CMS's history, its competition, its use as a stand-alone application versus use as a framework, and other foundational matters. It also introduces the case study — a cinema chain's Web site — used throughout the book to illustrate the concepts being taught. Lastly, the first part of the book covers the development environment needed by the reader to follow along, including discussion of Zope, which is an open source application server designed for creating CMSs and other Web-based applications.
The second part of the book covers Plone customization: basic concepts, laying out a site's strategy, security and workflow issues, add-on products, and creating a new theme. The book's third part, the longest, covers how to extend Plone with new functionality: Zope programming essentials, custom content types, standalone views and forms, working with a relational databases, user management, creating user interfaces with KSS, and more. The fourth and last part of the book addresses real world deployment of one's extensions, including Zope server management, production server setup, LDAP authentication, and possibilities for the future. Unlike most technical books, the author provides at the end a brief yet worthwhile section on where the reader can go next to learn more along the same lines as the book. The brevity of the section is certainly not from a lack of knowledge or helpfulness on the part of the author, but rather the dearth of information available to developers interested in learning about how to extend Plone.
There's a great deal to like about this book. The author clearly possesses the expertise and experience needed for providing instruction on a challenging topic such as this. His explanations are not abbreviated, as seen in so many other technical monographs. Furthermore, most programmers learn best by viewing and mentally dissecting sample code. For such people, Martin Aspeli's practical approach — focusing on a substantial sample application — will prove more engaging and instructive than the made-up and oftentimes overly simplistic examples found in many computer programming books — including the increasingly popular cookbook titles. On the other hand, by placing almost all of the discussion within the framework of a single sample application, the author diminishes the potential of the book for reference purposes. To benefit the most from this book, the reader definitely would want to work through all of the chapters, in detail, and in the order presented.
In presenting the many steps of creating the case study application, the author provides a generous amount of information on what he considers to be best practices, to make the Plone development process more reliable, and the resulting code easier to maintain and further extend in the future. The confident authority with which the author covers these principles, and the validity of the examples provided, demonstrates his knowledge of the subject matter, and reassures the reader that the author has the experience to provide reliable technical guidance.
In terms of prerequisites, readers should have a solid familiarity with Python and Plone. The book covers Plone version 3.0, but still would be of value to developers who have not yet upgraded from an earlier 2.x release.
Professional Plone Development is definitely best suited for Plone developers and administrators from the intermediate to advanced levels. However, even someone fairly new to Plone, would benefit from what it offers. In fact, carefully working through all of the material, and taking the time to really understand it, could take a developer from the beginner to the intermediate level. With further experience, subsequent rereadings of the book would likely yield further insights. It's that kind of book — meaty and in-depth, and not in any way a shallow "dummies" book.
However, there are some criticisms that should be leveled against this book, although none of them have anything to do with the writing of the author or the sample code. Rather, these are recommendations for future improvement directed to the publisher. First and foremost, the book's print on the page, is quite shiny — and not in the sense of a "Firefly" compliment. Rather, it reflects light as if the ink were extremely glossy. As a result, depending upon the placement of one's reading light, the page being viewed invariably has a large shiny spot, forcing the reader to keep rocking the book back and forth, relative to the light source, in order to shift the glare away from the section on the page that is currently being viewed. Of the hundreds if not thousands of technical books I have read, this is the only one with this type of printing, and I hope it is the last. This problem is not seen with the largest text of all, such as "Part N" at the beginning of each of the book's four major parts.
The images in the book, of which there are few, have a high degree of pixelation, which makes them look cheap, though it certainly does not make them impossible to read. As with the book's text, the pictures suffer from the same annoying shininess.
Earlier it was mentioned that the prospective reader can order a copy of the book from the publisher's Web site. However, I would not recommend this until the publisher improves the way that they package their books for shipping. Rather than enclosing the book in a plastic bag or a piece of clean wrapping paper, to protect it, the book is placed bare inside of the shipping box, in which it bounces around during transit, as it makes its way to the purchaser from the shipping/distribution facility. Consequently, the corners and edges of the book are easily curled, and the outside surfaces of the book's cover are scratched from the imperfections found in the shipping box's interior. This shows what can happen with books that are mailed with no internal protection. Publishers should not assume that what the shipping department sees when they place the book in the box, is what the customer sees days later when they receive it. Fortunately, this book is available from all major online booksellers, including the 11 firms listed on the publisher's Web page, for various countries. While this might not guarantee better protection of the book's cover, I have had far fewer similar problems with Amazon.com, for instance.
Despite these production flaws — all of which can be corrected — Professional Plone Development is a worthy addition to the library of any Plone administrator interested in making the most of their Plone installation, any Python developer who wants to create Web sites without reinventing the wheel, and any professional programmer interested in taking advantage of the growing demand for Plone developers.
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor.
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Re:What is the Zope? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just wish I could find decent documentation on Zope3. The greatest fear of the Zope 3 development community seems to be that someone might someday actually be able to use it.