[Plone-NGOs] Initial thoughts on a "Plone for Nonprofits" bundle

[Jon Stahl]

Hi all-

 

A fit of late-night energy seized me a couple of days ago and I pounded out some extremely raw thinking about a "Plone For Nonprofits" bundle on my blog at:

 

http://blogs.onenw.org/jon/archives/2006/12/27/initial-thoughts-on-a-plone-for-nonprofits-bundle/

 

That was probably not the best venue, but that's the kind of bad late-night decision I often make. ;-)

 

In any case, there's been some good discussion in the comment thread, and maybe it's worthwhile to bring it back over here to the list.

 

best,

jon

 

 

-----------------------------

Jon Stahl, Program Manager

ONE/Northwest - Online Networking for the Environment

[hidden email]  http://www.onenw.org
206.286.1235x15  skype: jonstahl  y!: jondstahl

 

Want a piece of my mind? Check out my blog at:

http://blogs.onenw.org/jon

 

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[Martin Aspeli-2]

Jon Stahl wrote:

> Hi all-
>  
> A fit of late-night energy seized me a couple of days ago and I pounded
> out some extremely raw thinking about a "Plone For Nonprofits" bundle on
> my blog at:
>  
> http://blogs.onenw.org/jon/archives/2006/12/27/initial-thoughts-on-a-plone-for-nonprofits-bundle/
>  
> That was probably not the best venue, but that's the kind of bad
> late-night decision I often make. ;-)
>  
> In any case, there's been some good discussion in the comment thread,
> and maybe it's worthwhile to bring it back over here to the list.

Hi Jon,

I don't have much to add, but I saw the blog post and I'm really excited
that someone's running with this. Hope you manage to push it through!

Martin


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[Derec Davies FoE Brisbane]

Hi All
Looks like a good list Jon.
However I personally have some issues with CompositePack. I recommend
CMFContentPanels as an alternative for review.

I feel that although CompositePack is good it requires a lot of ZMI tweaking
to get it up to a basic level of usability. I say this because if you are
targeting this package at small NGO's with limited tech support -
CompositePack is hard to get the average user off and running.

CMFContentPanels is easy to use and ready out of the box.

Thanks
Derec

Hi all
My name is Derec. I am the coordinator of the Friends of the Earth Australia
ITC team. My technical knowledge in IT is limited, as I come from a user
perspective. My primary role in my team is coordination and vision
development.

FoEA currently runs Plone for our local group Intranets and public sites.
I have been watching this list for many months.



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[George L]

Jon Stahl <jon@...> writes:

> A
> fit of late-night energy seized me a couple of days ago and I pounded out some
> extremely raw thinking about a "Plone For Nonprofits" bundle on my blog
> at:
>
>  
>
http://blogs.onenw.org/jon/archives/2006/12/27/initial-thoughts-on-a-plone-for-nonprofits-bundle/


My first thought is -- that's a lot of products. How would that many products
get maintained with an eye toward keeping a stable nonprofit bundle? I haven't
tried most of them before because of not knowing how reliable any product is (so
maybe my concern goes hand in hand with the plans to revamp the add-on products
section).


Peace,
George


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[Jon Stahl]

 

> [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of George Lee
> Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 2:12 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [Plone-NGOs] Initial thoughts on a "Plone for
> Nonprofits" bundle
>
> Jon Stahl <jon@...> writes:
>
> > A
> > fit of late-night energy seized me a couple of days ago and
> I pounded
> > out some extremely raw thinking about a "Plone For
> Nonprofits" bundle
> > on my blog
> > at:
> >
> >  
> >
> http://blogs.onenw.org/jon/archives/2006/12/27/initial-thought

s-on-a-plone-for-nonprofits-bundle/
>
>
> My first thought is -- that's a lot of products. How would
> that many products get maintained with an eye toward keeping
> a stable nonprofit bundle? I haven't tried most of them
> before because of not knowing how reliable any product is (so
> maybe my concern goes hand in hand with the plans to revamp
> the add-on products section).

George-

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, indeed.  

I am *definitely* making the assumption that the revamping of
Plone.org's products section will happen, and in fact my colleagues at
ONE/Northwest are pitching in a bit with both PHC (the documentation
section) and PSC (the products section).  Martin Aspeli, who is leading
the work on PSC, could definitely use more hands on deck, so if you have
some spare coding cycles, head on over
http://www.openplans.org/projects/plone-products.  

One of my reasons for starting this conversation is the hope that the
process will "shine the light" on products that
  * are great, and should be more widely recognized & adopted
  * have a lot of potential, but need some attention to cross the chasm
  * don't exist, but ought to :-)

My experience in talking with folks who develop add-on Products (as well
as being the maintainer of one myself (Press Room, at
http://plone.org/products/pressroom) is that user demand plays a
significant role. (Limi calls this phenomenon "shame based
development.")

I could imagine setting some simple quality standards for bundle
candidates, such as:
 -- Has substantial unit test coverage
 -- Has documentation
 -- Appropriately i18n support
 -- etc etc.

And of course, the process of developing a bundle will force us to try
out and evaluate a lot of products.  

So, I see a bundle as both an "end" but more importantly as a "means" to
helping improve the add-on product landscape.  Improving PSC is also an
essential part as well.


best,
jon

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[Kai Harris]

I second Derec's suggestion of CMFContentPanels.  I found it to be
much easier to use 'out of the box' than CompositePack.  ContentPanels
needs its UI refined some and it would be very helpful to have some
additional Panel templates.  But you don't need to go to the ZMI and
once you figure out the quirky UI, it's pretty powerful.

I'm currently developing a Plone site to replace our current website.
Our intranet site content and website content will be in the same
plone instance.  Users login to see intranet site content.  The most
useful products I've found are:
CMFContentPanels
EasyBlog - I chose this on a recommendation, didn't look much at Quills
PlonePoPoll
SimplePortlets
PloneFormGen - really cool custom form generation and I've only
scratched the surface of this products capabilities
AnalyticsForPlone - Must have for all sites.  Track your usage stats
in an *incredibly* useful manner.

LDAP and Active Directory integration is one area where I think Plone
could use real help.  It's possible now but a pain to get set up and
groups don't work without patching (at least in 2.5).  Having this
integration as 'out of the box' as possible would make it much easier
for nonprofits to develop one Plone site that supports both website
content and intranet content.

Anyhow, that's my 2 pennies.

Kai

Kai Harris
Operations Manager
Legal Assistance for Seniors
http://www.lashicap.org

On 1/1/07, Derec Davies FoE Brisbane <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi All
> Looks like a good list Jon.
> However I personally have some issues with CompositePack. I recommend
> CMFContentPanels as an alternative for review.
>
> I feel that although CompositePack is good it requires a lot of ZMI tweaking
> to get it up to a basic level of usability. I say this because if you are
> targeting this package at small NGO's with limited tech support -
> CompositePack is hard to get the average user off and running.
>
> CMFContentPanels is easy to use and ready out of the box.
>
> Thanks
> Derec
>
> Hi all
> My name is Derec. I am the coordinator of the Friends of the Earth Australia
> ITC team. My technical knowledge in IT is limited, as I come from a user
> perspective. My primary role in my team is coordination and vision
> development.
>
> FoEA currently runs Plone for our local group Intranets and public sites.
> I have been watching this list for many months.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>
>
>

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[John Habermann]

Hi Kai

On 1/8/07, Kai Harris <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I second Derec's suggestion of CMFContentPanels.  I found it to be
> much easier to use 'out of the box' than CompositePack.  ContentPanels
> needs its UI refined some and it would be very helpful to have some
> additional Panel templates.  But you don't need to go to the ZMI and
> once you figure out the quirky UI, it's pretty powerful.
>
> I'm currently developing a Plone site to replace our current website.
> Our intranet site content and website content will be in the same
> plone instance.  Users login to see intranet site content.  The most
> useful products I've found are:
> CMFContentPanels
> EasyBlog - I chose this on a recommendation, didn't look much at Quills

I ended up using CoreBlog2 primarily because I liked the way it let
you associate images and other media with you blog entries.

> PlonePoPoll
> SimplePortlets
> PloneFormGen - really cool custom form generation and I've only
> scratched the surface of this products capabilities
> AnalyticsForPlone - Must have for all sites.  Track your usage stats
> in an *incredibly* useful manner.
>
> LDAP and Active Directory integration is one area where I think Plone
> could use real help.  It's possible now but a pain to get set up and
> groups don't work without patching (at least in 2.5).  Having this
> integration as 'out of the box' as possible would make it much easier
> for nonprofits to develop one Plone site that supports both website
> content and intranet content.

We have a Plone based intranet that integrates with LDAP. Sam the
developer has the project online at
http://sustainablesoftware.com.au/projects/ssidm. The aim of the
project was to provide a central repositry for our users and groups
that we can integrate our other IT systems, like email, request
tracking systems, website and CRM into. Still early days yet as far as
the integration goes with other systems goes as they are still being
setup but I have used it to extract user information into RT (ticket
tracking system) easily. Other people in our organisation are using it
as a contact source for OutLook and Thunderbird. Having a central user
repositry should make life a lot easier as we try to improve the use
of IT systems in our organisation  and I guess other NGO's which have
a distributed nature like ours would find the same thing.

cheers
John

>
> Anyhow, that's my 2 pennies.
>
> Kai
>
> Kai Harris
> Operations Manager
> Legal Assistance for Seniors
> http://www.lashicap.org
>
> On 1/1/07, Derec Davies FoE Brisbane <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Hi All
> > Looks like a good list Jon.
> > However I personally have some issues with CompositePack. I recommend
> > CMFContentPanels as an alternative for review.
> >
> > I feel that although CompositePack is good it requires a lot of ZMI tweaking
> > to get it up to a basic level of usability. I say this because if you are
> > targeting this package at small NGO's with limited tech support -
> > CompositePack is hard to get the average user off and running.
> >
> > CMFContentPanels is easy to use and ready out of the box.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Derec
> >
> > Hi all
> > My name is Derec. I am the coordinator of the Friends of the Earth Australia
> > ITC team. My technical knowledge in IT is limited, as I come from a user
> > perspective. My primary role in my team is coordination and vision
> > development.
> >
> > FoEA currently runs Plone for our local group Intranets and public sites.
> > I have been watching this list for many months.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > NGO mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>

--
John Habermann
Internet Programmer, System Administrator
The Wilderness Society Inc
http://www.wilderness.org.au

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[David Bain-5]

Should there be a newsletter product there as well?
Any recommendations?

On 1/7/07, Kai Harris <[hidden email]> wrote:

I second Derec's suggestion of CMFContentPanels.  I found it to be
much easier to use 'out of the box' than CompositePack.  ContentPanels
needs its UI refined some and it would be very helpful to have some
additional Panel templates.  But you don't need to go to the ZMI and
once you figure out the quirky UI, it's pretty powerful.

I'm currently developing a Plone site to replace our current website.
Our intranet site content and website content will be in the same
plone instance.  Users login to see intranet site content.  The most
useful products I've found are:
CMFContentPanels
EasyBlog - I chose this on a recommendation, didn't look much at Quills
PlonePoPoll
SimplePortlets
PloneFormGen - really cool custom form generation and I've only
scratched the surface of this products capabilities
AnalyticsForPlone - Must have for all sites.  Track your usage stats
in an *incredibly* useful manner.

LDAP and Active Directory integration is one area where I think Plone
could use real help.  It's possible now but a pain to get set up and
groups don't work without patching (at least in 2.5).  Having this
integration as 'out of the box' as possible would make it much easier
for nonprofits to develop one Plone site that supports both website
content and intranet content.

Anyhow, that's my 2 pennies.

Kai

Kai Harris
Operations Manager
Legal Assistance for Seniors
http://www.lashicap.org

On 1/1/07, Derec Davies FoE Brisbane <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi All
> Looks like a good list Jon.
> However I personally have some issues with CompositePack. I recommend
> CMFContentPanels as an alternative for review.
>
> I feel that although CompositePack is good it requires a lot of ZMI tweaking
> to get it up to a basic level of usability. I say this because if you are
> targeting this package at small NGO's with limited tech support -
> CompositePack is hard to get the average user off and running.
>
> CMFContentPanels is easy to use and ready out of the box.
>
> Thanks
> Derec
>
> Hi all
> My name is Derec. I am the coordinator of the Friends of the Earth Australia

> ITC team. My technical knowledge in IT is limited, as I come from a user

> perspective. My primary role in my team is coordination and vision
> development.
>
> FoEA currently runs Plone for our local group Intranets and public sites.
> I have been watching this list for many months.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NGO mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ngo
>
>
>

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[David Siedband-2]

Some javascript/style in this post has been disabled (why?)

On Jan 7, 2007, at 5:57 PM, David Bain wrote:

Should there be a newsletter product there as well?
Any recommendations?

+1 

how about PloneGazette?

Perhaps we could give it some love and add a few different newsletter template designs :)

--

David

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[David Bain-5]

Some javascript/style in this post has been disabled (why?)

I have no experience with PloneGazette.
Any thoughts?

On 1/7/07, David Siedband <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Jan 7, 2007, at 5:57 PM, David Bain wrote:

Should there be a newsletter product there as well?
Any recommendations?

+1 

how about PloneGazette?

Perhaps we could give it some love and add a few different newsletter template designs :)

--

David

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[David Siedband-2]

On Jan 7, 2007, at 6:39 PM, David Bain wrote:
> I have no experience with PloneGazette.
> Any thoughts?

PloneGazette has a nice UI for building newsletters from site  
content, but the default design of the newsletters is pretty, uh,  
minimalist :)

Perhaps we should also be thinking about integrating with (optional)  
tools that provide more sophisticated relationship/subscriber  
management, bounce processing, etc. like listen, or OneNW's  
salesforce.com plugin.

--
David




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[George L]

Kai Harris <kai.harris@...> writes:

>
> I second Derec's suggestion of CMFContentPanels.  I found it to be
> much easier to use 'out of the box' than CompositePack.  ContentPanels
> needs its UI refined some and it would be very helpful to have some
> additional Panel templates.  But you don't need to go to the ZMI and
> once you figure out the quirky UI, it's pretty powerful.


I haven't used CompositePack or ContentPanels yet, but this reminds me of a
dilemma I continually face in programming -- the trade-off between:

* Strong security
* Solid programming practices (filesystem based code, Zope3 views and adapters
that allow for easier reuse and extensibility from a developers' standpoint)
* Ability to customize through the web (TTW)

For instance one thing that scared me off about some of the existing newsletter
products was the TALES expressions that could be inputed from the web -- which
screamed "Potential security holes" to me. The newsletter product I made for
myself lets me do some powerful work with Zope3 views to make my newsletters
from some filesystem-based templates, but is hard to customize TTW. (When
Zope3-style view templates can be customized through the web, as is being worked
on in plone.app.layout I believe, this will help some.)

Is this a common trade-off that people run into? What are some of the best ways
to do this?


Peace,
George


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[George L]

George Lee <georgeleejr@...> writes:

> I haven't used CompositePack or ContentPanels yet, but this reminds me of a
> dilemma I continually face in programming -- the trade-off between:
>
> * Strong security
> * Solid programming practices (filesystem based code, Zope3 views and adapters
> that allow for easier reuse and extensibility from a developers' standpoint)
> * Ability to customize through the web (TTW)


That last bullet point is really two, which also are in tension with each other:
 * Ability to customize through the web, through the ZMI
 * Ability to customize through the web, using regular Plone content and control
panels outside of the ZMI


The ZMI assumes a high level of security clearance and Zope knowledge from any
user who can access it, so it's safer to allow some crazy things there like
users modifying page templates, TALES, writing Python scripts, etc. -- things
that you can't trust a regular Plone user without access to the ZMI to do. But
this means it is hard for a regular Plone user to be able to customize things
very far.

It seems the best way to approach this is to designate some clear parameters for
how you want a regular Plone user to be able to customize things, and then take
the good chunk of effort to design the UI to let them to do that. A regular
Plone user will never get the full power of the ZMI, but you can pick and choose
portions of that power to expose. It just takes time to do this in a robust and
easy-to-use way.

Perhaps this is all very obvious since after all this is exactly what Plone
add-on products are supposed to do!

Peace,
George


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[Duncan Booth]

"Kai Harris" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I second Derec's suggestion of CMFContentPanels.  I found it to be
> much easier to use 'out of the box' than CompositePack.  ContentPanels
> needs its UI refined some and it would be very helpful to have some
> additional Panel templates.  But you don't need to go to the ZMI and
> once you figure out the quirky UI, it's pretty powerful.

So far as I know, CMFContentPanels doesn't use Archetypes references so
that's a big point against it.

I know there are issues with CompositePack (not least that it uses AT
references in inappropriate ways), but I think it would be better to work
on resolving those and improving its UI.


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[Reinout van Rees]

Duncan Booth wrote:

> "Kai Harris" <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> I second Derec's suggestion of CMFContentPanels.  I found it to be
>> much easier to use 'out of the box' than CompositePack.  ContentPanels
>> needs its UI refined some and it would be very helpful to have some
>> additional Panel templates.  But you don't need to go to the ZMI and
>> once you figure out the quirky UI, it's pretty powerful.
>
> So far as I know, CMFContentPanels doesn't use Archetypes references so
> that's a big point against it.
>
> I know there are issues with CompositePack (not least that it uses AT
> references in inappropriate ways), but I think it would be better to work
> on resolving those and improving its UI.

I heard some things about needing to click around in the ZMI for
compositepack. I don't see that in a site we're building now. There's a
design tab and you can click around in your plone interface. Even
drag/drop shuffling around of viewlets is working. It *might* be a very
recent branch.

https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/CompositePack/branches/1.1

There's also genericsetup support in that branch, allowing you to define
layouts in genericsetup configs instead of in python code.


Reinout

--
Reinout van Rees                       r.van.rees @ zestsoftware.nl
http://vanrees.org/weblog/                  http://zestsoftware.nl/
"Military engineers build missiles. Civil engineers build targets."


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[Duncan Booth]

Reinout van Rees <[hidden email]>
wrote:

>> I know there are issues with CompositePack (not least that it uses AT
>> references in inappropriate ways), but I think it would be better to
>> work on resolving those and improving its UI.
>
> I heard some things about needing to click around in the ZMI for
> compositepack. I don't see that in a site we're building now. There's
> a design tab and you can click around in your plone interface. Even
> drag/drop shuffling around of viewlets is working. It *might* be a
> very recent branch.

The only reason you've ever needed to go to ZMI for CompositePack was to
set up the viewlets and layouts that you are using. Alternatively you can
do that by writing some Python to customise your site, and now using
GenericSetup you can do it in xml.

>
> https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/CompositePack/branches/1.1
>
> There's also genericsetup support in that branch, allowing you to
> define layouts in genericsetup configs instead of in python code.
>

I expect the preferred technique these days is to use the ZMI to configure
CompositePack on your development system and then export the configuration
and import it onto the live system.

But that's just the initial setup: the end-users of CompositePack have
never needed to go anywhere need the zmi.

My main problems with CompositePack are more internal:

dragging a viewlet from one slot to another corrupted the UID catalog (I
don't know whether this has finally been fixed in the current branch or
not: the problem really needed fixing in the underlying CompositePage
product, but the author of that product wasn't really interested in fixing
it).

there is insufficient context passed to the viewlets:

e.g. I have a viewlet for a smart folder which restricts the smart folder
contents to only include things in the same folder as the composite page
(and for any folders in the result it uses a subtopic to render them). That
way you can use one smart folder to generate a local navigation tree inside
any composite page. You would think that a viewlet would be given context
information about the page rendering it, but it isn't, so it has to make
assumptions about the internal structure of the composite page to figure it
out.

Ditto another viewlet which interacts with the preceding viewlet in the
slot: there is nothing passed to the viewlet to tell it in which position
it is being rendered. Even a simple thing like having a separator between
viewlets is harder than it should be as the viewlet cannot know whether it
is in the first or last position in the slot.


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[Kai Harris]

On 1/8/07, Duncan Booth <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I expect the preferred technique these days is to use the ZMI to configure
> CompositePack on your development system and then export the configuration
> and import it onto the live system.
>
> But that's just the initial setup: the end-users of CompositePack have
> never needed to go anywhere need the zmi.

I'm speaking as a nonprofit professional trying to build a plone site.
 I'm neither an end-user nor a professional developer.  I have
recently taught myself enough to build page templates, but wish this
wasn't necessary knowledge to effectively use composite page-building
products.

When I looked at both CompositePack and ContentPanels in August or
September, ContentPanels had more out of the box functionality than
CompositePack, so I chose ContentPanels.  While I care about the
technical merits of CompositePack vs. ContentPanels, I want to use the
tool that requires the least amount of template-building.

I imagine that my experience is similar to many nonprofits.  We are
developing in-house and are learning Plone as we go.  Composite
page-building products should be designed for people like us.  Plone
developers can build their own custom pages templates without using
composite products, but I can't and most nonprofits can't unless they
hire a Plone developer!

As a side note - this email thread is my first real introduction to
the Plone Community, and I have to say I'm impressed!  It's really
cool getting such great responses and discussion about nonprofit Plone
use.

Kai

Kai Harris
Operations Manager
Legal Assistance for Seniors
http://www.lashicap.org

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[George L]

Kai Harris <kai.harris@...> writes:

> I imagine that my experience is similar to many nonprofits.  We are
> developing in-house and are learning Plone as we go.  Composite
> page-building products should be designed for people like us.  Plone
> developers can build their own custom pages templates without using
> composite products, but I can't and most nonprofits can't unless they
> hire a Plone developer!

I'd like to ask a question of the Plone community which I've gotten some hints
of. For a small non-profit, budget $100,000-$200,000, is Plone really
appropriate or sustainable? We're not talking Oxfam (I'm assuming) or the
government here.

One of the Plone gurus, maybe limi, mentioned Plone catering to the "higher end
of the mid-level range" of the market. I love Plone and the power it gives; I'm
also always worried about donating a lot of time to developing Plone products
for non-profits without really knowing if it'll be sustainable after I'm gone.
Is the usual practice to hire an outside developer to help with new
development, maintain simple behind-the-scenes things (backups, dealing with
server crashes, etc.), etc.? How much realistically should a nonprofit commit
to say long-term maintenance of a site, if it doesn't care about too much new
development? How much if it does?

It seems people often don't want to or can't give hard numbers because of the
varying use cases and requirements, but even a sense of the minimums and
typical costs would be really helpful. If you want to e-mail me off-list,
that's fine too although I'd expect this information to be helpful broadly.

Especially after reading in the "Open Source Myths" that "Open Source is
cheaper" is a partial myth ... I want to really understand these financial
realities!

Peace,
George


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[Jon Stahl]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email]
> [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of George Lee

> I'd like to ask a question of the Plone community which I've
> gotten some hints of. For a small non-profit, budget
> $100,000-$200,000, is Plone really appropriate or
> sustainable? We're not talking Oxfam (I'm assuming) or the
> government here.
>
> One of the Plone gurus, maybe limi, mentioned Plone catering
> to the "higher end of the mid-level range" of the market. I
> love Plone and the power it gives; I'm also always worried
> about donating a lot of time to developing Plone products for
> non-profits without really knowing if it'll be sustainable
> after I'm gone.
> Is the usual practice to hire an outside developer to help
> with new development, maintain simple behind-the-scenes
> things (backups, dealing with server crashes, etc.), etc.?
> How much realistically should a nonprofit commit to say
> long-term maintenance of a site, if it doesn't care about too
> much new development? How much if it does?
>
> It seems people often don't want to or can't give hard
> numbers because of the varying use cases and requirements,
> but even a sense of the minimums and typical costs would be
> really helpful. If you want to e-mail me off-list, that's
> fine too although I'd expect this information to be helpful broadly.
>
> Especially after reading in the "Open Source Myths" that
> "Open Source is cheaper" is a partial myth ... I want to
> really understand these financial realities!

George-

I've had this conversation with Limi (and others), and my belief (and
experience) lead me to the following conclusions:

-- Plone is definitely a strong contender for "mid-tier" CMS projects --
as the experiences of Enfold, Plone Solutions, and others shows.  (Paul
Everitt has defined these as $50,000 - $500,000 projects.)

-- Those kinds of projects are what provide strong income streams to
many core Plone developers -- giving them time to invest in making Plone
rock.  Thus, they have a lot of interest in "positioning" Plone in that
space.  That's good for Plone.

-- However, that marketing tends to obscure another truth.  Plone is
also really good for smaller projects.   Here at ONE/Northwest, we've
delivered over 80 projects in the $2000-$40,000 range.  It is definitely
possible for a developer who knows what they are doing to implement a
Plone site quite cheaply.   Plone 2.1 was a huge boost here, and Plone
3.0 is going to be another huge boost to the out of the box experience.

That said, deploying Plone projects quickly and cheaply requires some
experience.  Like all powerful CMS frameworks, Plone has a learning
curve.  I personally don't think it's really any steeper than anything
else, but opinions are a dime a dozen. ;-)

As we all know, Plone doesn't run in $5/month LAMP webhosting space.  So
it's not suitable for the most epehemeral and low-budget of efforts.
That said, capable virtual hosting (and turnkey folks like WebFaction)
are getting cheaper all the time, so I'm not convinced this is all that
much of a barrier.

$0.02.

best,
jon  

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[George L]

> From: Jon Stahl <jon@...>
>
> > -----Original Message (from: George Lee)-----
>
> > I'd like to ask a question of the Plone community which I've
> > gotten some hints of. For a small non-profit, budget
> > $100,000-$200,000, is Plone really appropriate or
> > sustainable? We're not talking Oxfam (I'm assuming) or the
> > government here.
>
> George-
>
> I've had this conversation with Limi (and others), and my belief (and
> experience) lead me to the following conclusions:
>
> -- Plone is definitely a strong contender for "mid-tier" CMS projects --
> as the experiences of Enfold, Plone Solutions, and others shows.  (Paul
> Everitt has defined these as $50,000 - $500,000 projects.)
>
> ...
>
> -- However, that marketing tends to obscure another truth.  Plone is
> also really good for smaller projects.   Here at ONE/Northwest, we've
> delivered over 80 projects in the $2000-$40,000 range.

Thanks Jon, that's immensely helpful information.

For the much lower end (say, $2000-$5000), what are the typical systems and
costs for ongoing support?

Do you have examples of sites in the different ranges, or descriptions of what
different prices might get in a project? Are you able to describe the
distribution of how many projects are at the very low end ($2000-$5000), up
through the $40,000 range?

Peace,
George


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