littled.net

I’m writing this largely in a moment of frustration rather than composing a rational, well-thought out post as I just need to get some things off my chest about Plone; or really my experiences of Plone.

I’m relatively new to Plone, although I’ve been using Zope for a few years now. Due to my previous Zope and CMF experience I was hoping that Plone learning curve wouldn’t be too steep. I was quite mistaken; Plone was different enough to pose quite a challenge. However, I made it and what’s more, I really enjoyed it. Not just in terms of getting to grips with Plone and its architecture; but using far more Python in building Archetypes-based content types and creating filesystem-level site products (including skins and configuration), not to mention being exposed to a whole new range of third party products. A far cry and substantial improvement on the way I used to create Zope sites using a mixture of through the Web customisation, External Methods, home grown product-level scripts and largely superceded third party products.

Now I’ve created a small number of Plone sites I’m now faced with the problems of tuning performance. Some of this is out of my hands and in those of the systems administrator but it necessarily involves and concerns me. There’s a large number of things to try. I’ve spent the last few days getting my head round using Selenium as a load and performance testing tool; and that’s just to gather the stats. Of course this is in addition to the building load of development work.

On top of this, I really need to get my head round Plone 3. I’m dipping into it as and when I can, but without dedicated time I’m finding it a little difficult to come to terms with what are new concepts for me: buildouts, GenericSetups, browser views, interfaces etc. will hopefully all become clear in time but for now it seems like yet another mass of stuff to master.

Plone is developing fast and I’m sure all these new ways of working are being made for perfectly good reasons. However, it’s quite a lot for a Plone integrator/developer to keep abreast of. In fact, as someone noted at our Zope/Plone day, keeping up with Plone is almost a full-time job in itself. It can sometimes seem like you’ve mastered something only to then read an article about how that method is being deprecated or the tools that you’ve used “suck”. I’m not a computer scientist, engineer or even a real “geek”. I’m a Web developer, with an arts background (i.e. I’d never get a job at Google) — basically someone who gets excited about cool visual things. This means that some of these reasons for changing practices or not doing something in a certain way anymore can seem a little esoteric.

Of course one way to voice issues is to get far more involved with Plone’s community. I’ve been incredibly impressed with it and the more of the lists you sign up to and the more blogs you read, you get a real sense of how big it is and its momentum. This product is being largely produced by volunteers who really care and are really good at what they do. I personally do want to get more involved; the documentation side is something that particularly appeals to me. However, more involvement in the project obviously entails a commitment and work outside of hours that to be honest, I’d rather spend on doing other “offline” things. The kind of things which I should be doing now instead of writing this blog post for instance.

Plone is a great product with a wonderful community. It’s exciting to work with. But, it is hard: depending on your abilities, its technology can be pretty challenging at times; plus it’s a moving target and not one that I imagine many integrators/developers at the coal face can always keep pace with.