11 min read

(For more resources on Plone, see here.)

Background

It seems like every application platform uses a different name for its add-ons: modules, components, libraries, packages, extensions, plug-ins, and more. Add-on packages for the Zope web application server are generally called Products. A Zope product is a bundle of Zope or Plone functionality contained in a Python module or modules. Like Plone, add-on products are distributed in source code, so that you may always read and examine them. Plone itself is actually a set of tightly connected Zope products and Python modules.

Plone add-on products may be divided into three major categories:

  1. Skins or themes that change Plone’s look and feel or add visual elements like portlets. These are typically the simplest of Plone products.
  2. Products that add new content types with specialized functionality. Some are simple extensions of built-in types, others have custom workflows and behaviours.
  3. Products that add to or change the behaviour of Plone itself.

Where to Find Products

Plone.org’s Products section at http://plone.org/products is the place to look for Plone products. At the time of this writing, the Plone.org contains listings for 765 products and 1,901 product releases.

The Plone Products section is itself built with a Plone product, the Plone Software Center – often called the PSC – that adds content types for projects, software releases, project roadmaps, issue trackers, and project documentation.

Using the Plone Product Pages

Visiting the Plone product pages for the first time may be a bewildering experience due to the number of available products. However, by specifying a product category and target Plone version, you will quickly narrow the product selection to the point where it’s worth reading descriptions and following the links to product pages.

Product pages typically contain product descriptions, software releases, and a list of available documentation, issue tracker, version control repository, and contact resources.

Each release will have release notes, a change log, and a list of Plone versions with which the release has been tested. If the release has a product package available, it will be available here for download. Some releases do not have associated software packages. This may be because the release is still in a planning stage, and the listing is mainly meant to document the product’s development roadmap; or because the development is still in an early stage, and the software is only available from a version-control repository.

The release notes commonly include a list of dependencies, and you should make special note of that along with compatible Plone versions. Many products require the installation of other, supporting products. Some require that your server or test workstation have particular system libraries or utilities.

Product pages may also have links to a variety of additional resources: product-specific documentation, other release pages, an issue tracker, a roadmap for future development, contact form for the project, and a version-control repository.

Playing it Safe with Add-On Products

Plone 3 is probably one of the most rigorously tested open-source software packages in existence. While no software is defect free, Plone’s core development team is on the leading edge of software development methodologies and work under a strong testing culture that requires that they prove their components work correctly before they ever become part of Plone.

Plone’s library of add-on products is a very different story. Add-on products are contributed by a diverse community of developers. Some add-on products follow the same development and maintenance methodologies as Plone itself; others are haphazard experiments. To complicate matters, today’s haphazard experiment may be – if it succeeds – next year’s rigorously developed and reliable product. (Much of the Plone core codebase began as add-on products.) And, this year’s reliable standby may lose the devotion of its developers and not be upgraded to work with the next version of Plone.

If you’re new to the world of open source software, this may seem dismaying. Don’t be discouraged. It is not hard to evaluate the status of a product, and the Plone community is happy to help. Be encouraged by evidence of continual, exciting innovation. Most importantly, stop thinking of yourself as a consumer. Take an interest in the community process that produces good products. Test some early releases and file bug reports and feature requests. Participate in, or help document, test, and fund the development of the products that are most important to you.

Product Choice Strategy

Trying out new Plone add-on products is great fun, but incorporating them into production websites requires planning and judgement if you’re going to have good long-run results.

New versions of Plone pose a particular challenge. Major new releases of Plone don’t just add features: with every major version of Plone the application programming interface (API) and presentation templates change. This is not done arbitrarily, and there is usually a good deal of warning before a major change, but it means that add-on products often need to be updated before they will work with a major new version of Plone.

Probably worthwhile to point out that major versions are released very ~18 months, and that minor version upgrades generally do not pose compatibility problems for the vast majority of add-on products.

This means that when a new version of Plone appears on the scene, you won’t be able to migrate your Plone site to use it until compatible product versions are available for all the add-on products in use on the site. If you’re using mainstream, well-supported products, this may happen very quickly. Many products are upgraded to work with new Plone versions during the beta and release-candidate stages of Plone development. Some products take longer, and some may not make the jump at all. The products least likely to be updated are often ones made obsolete by new functionality.

This creates a somewhat ironic situation when a new version of Plone arrives: the quickest adopters are often those with the least history with the platform. The slowest adopters are sometimes the sites that are most heavily invested in the new features. Consider, as a prime example, Plone.org, a very active, very large, community site which must be conservatively managed and stick with proven versions of add-on products. Plone.org often does not migrate to a new Plone version until many months after release.

Is this a problem? Not really – unless you need both the newest features of the newest Plone version and the functionality of a more slowly developed add-on product. If that’s the case, prepare to make an investment of time or money in supporting product development and possibly writing some custom migration scripts.

If you want to be more conservative, try the following strategy:

  • Enjoy testing many products and keeping up with new developments by trying them out on a test server.
  • Learn the built-in Plone functionality well, and use it in preference to add-on products whenever possible.
  • Make sure you have a good understanding of the maturity level and degree of developer support for add-on products.
  • Incorporate the smallest number of add-on products reasonably possible into your production sites.
  • Don’t be just a consumer: when you commit to a product, help support it by filing bug reports and feature requests, contributing translations, documentation or code, and answering questions about it on the Plone mailing lists or #plone IRC channel.

Evaluating a Product

Judging the maturity of a Plone product is generally easy. Start with a product’s project page on Plone.org. The product page may offer you a “Current release” and one or more “Experimental releases”. Anything marked as a current release should be stable on its tested Plone versions. If you need a release to work with an earlier version of Plone than the ones supported by the current release, follow the “List all releases…” link.

Releases in the “Experimental” list will be marked as “alpha”, “beta”, or “Release Candidate.” These terms are well-defined in practice:

  • Alpha releases are truly experimental, and are usually posted in order to get early feedback. Interfaces and implementations are likely still in flux. Download an alpha release only for testing in an experimental environment, and only for purposes of previewing new features and giving feedback to developers. Do not plan on keeping any content you develop using an alpha release, as there may be no upgrade path to later releases.
  • With a beta release, feature sets and programming interfaces should be stable or changing only incrementally. It’s reasonable to start testing the integration of the product with the platform and with other products. There will typically be an upgrade path to future releases. Bug reports will be welcome and will help develop the product.
  • Release candidates have a fixed feature set and no known major issues. Templates and messages should be complete, so that translators may work on language files with some confidence that their work won’t be lost. If you encounter a bug in release-candidate products, please immediately file an issue report.

Products may be re-released repeatedly at any release state. For alpha, beta and RC releases, each additional release changes the release count, but not the version number. So, “PloneFormGen 1.2” (Beta release 6) is the sixth beta release of version 1.2 of PloneFormGen. Once a product release reaches current release status, new releases for maintenance will increment the version number by 0.0.1. “PloneFormGen 1.1.3” is thus the third maintenance release of version 1.1 of that product.

Don’t make too much of version numbers or release counts. Release status is a better indicator of maturity.

If your site is mission-critical, don’t use beta releases on it. However, if you test carefully before deploying, you may find that some products are ready for live use when late in their beta development on sites where an error or glitch wouldn’t be intolerable.

Testing a Product

Conscientious Plone site administrators maintain an off-line mirror of their production sites on a secondary server – or even a desktop computer – that they may use for testing purposes.

Always test a new product on a test server. Before deploying, test it on a server that has precisely the combination of products in use on your production server. Ideally, test with a copy of the database of your live server. Check the functionality of not only the new product, but also the products you’re already using. The latter is particularly important if you’re using products that alter the base functionality of Plone or Zope.

Looking to the Future

Evaluating product maturity and testing the product will help you judge its current status, but what about the future? What are the signs of a product that’s likely to be well-maintained and available for future versions of Plone? There are no guarantees, but here are some signs that experienced Plone integrators look for:

  • Developing in public. This is open-source software. Look to see if the product is being developed with a public roadmap for the future, and with a public version-control repository. Plone.org provides product authors with great tools for indicating release plans, and makes a Subversion (SVN) version-control repository available to all product authors. Look to see if they’re using these facilities.
  • Issue tracker status. Every released product should have a public issue (bug) tracker. Look for it. Look to see if it’s being maintained, and if issues are actively responded to. No issue tracker, or lots of old, uncategorized issues are bad signs.
  • Support for multiple Plone versions. If a product has been around a while look to see if versions are available for at least a couple of Plone releases. This might be the previous and current releases, or the current and next releases.
  • Internationalization. Excellent products attract translations.
  • Good development methodologies. This is the hardest criterion for a non-developer to judge, but a forthcoming version of the Plone Software Center will ask developers to rate themselves on compliance with a set of community standards. My guess is that product developers will be pretty honest about these ratings.

Several of these criteria have something in common: they allow the Plone community to participate in product maintenance and development. The best projects belong to the community, and not any single author.

One of the best ways to get a quick read on the quality of an add-on product is to hop on the #plone IRC channel and ask. Chances are you’ll run into someone who can share their experiences and offer insight. You may even run into the product author him/herself!

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here