[HLUG] Open source intranet?

[Julian Robbins]

Morven Lewis-Everley wrote:
> Anyone here have an office intranet using open source software?
>
> I have read Plone is good, does anyone have any experience using this for an
> intranet?
>   
Hi Morven

Happy new Year!

I use Plone www.plone.org for our main company website, www.q-par.com

I am quite a fan, with Plone you can do anything, well almost, and its
very different to Joomla.

Joomla (at least to me) feels like a Ford Escort, practical, popular,
well liked. Plone is more of a tank, extremely powerful, can cope with
anything you throw at it, but sometimes hard work with a steeper
learning curve to get to grips with it fully.

Yes, it is based on python, but so far, I haven't had to learn any
python to get the site done.

Many big companies use Plone: Ebay, the CIA, OXFAM, many Universities
and the Warwickshire Police !

The other nice thing about Plone is that it still has excellent open
source credentials. No one company is behind Plone, its very
democratically run, and done properly with the Plone Foundation looking
after legal aspects pf the name and running the Plone conventions. Plone
wont disappear or fracture in two, as happened with Joomla.

Also, Plone 3.1 works extremely well as an intranet as it has a set of
built in permissions and well designed Workflows that can be used
specifically for an Intranet. The workflow defines who and what actions
need to take place to edit, create, retract and/or publish/review
content. In these terms, it will satisfy any Quality system requirement
for accountability of who has edited what, when and how etc. As Plone is
based around its own database system the ZODB, it effectively has its
own built in journalling system, like a wiki, so a record of changes is
always available and even what was changed too.

Another good thing about Plone is that it has an extensive amount of
Plugin modules called 'Products' . Unusually, virtually all are open
source and free, which sets it apart from Joomla in this respect. Many
of these Products are still created by commercial Plone developer
companies, but the ethos is to feed your work back in for the benefit of
other Plonistas.

Plone can now be setup quite easily with the Universal Installer.
Although normally its better to install an app from your distros
repositories, its best not to with plone. It IS a complicated beast, and
trying to let even a DEB system upgrade a plone site is liable to cause
breakage.
That said the Universal Installer is now very easy to use, and the
Product management a dream where running a single 'buildout -v' cmd will
download and update any of the constituent parts of Plone or any
Products you have used, wherever from. Part of the difficulty is thge
sheer number of options on how to do things, but flexibility is useful
right ?

I would give it at least a try, and there is even a Windows installer
which is just an exe you run and then its installed.

It IS quite different from Joomla and Drupal, and understanding how Zope
is sitting there behind the scenes and how it all fits together takes a
little time. Its not for everyone, but at least is relatively easy to
setup and tryout so you can make your own decision.

There are some good UK Plone Hosting/Development  companies; we use
Openia, openia.com, and Sharkbyte Studios sharkbyte.co.uk

If you want to know more, please email me off list and we can have a
natter about it .. I have a few Plone books, if you want to borrow them.

Julian

> Ta,
>
> Mo
>