What is Plone?
Plone lets non-technical people create and maintain information for a public website or an intranet using only a web browser. Plone is easy to understand and use — allowing users to be productive in just half an hour — yet offers a wealth of community-developed add-ons and extensibility to keep meeting your needs for years to come.
Blending the creativity and speed of open source with a technologically advanced Python back-end, Plone offers superior security without sacrificing power or extensibility.
The Plone community is an incredibly diverse group that bridges many types and sizes of organizations, many countries and languages, and everything from technical novices to hardcore programmers. Out of that diversity comes an attention to detail in code, function, user interface and ease of use that makes Plone one of the top 2% of open source projects worldwide. (Source: Ohloh)
Plone’s intellectual property and trademarks are protected by the non-profit Plone Foundation. This means that Plone’s future is not in the hands of any one person or company.
Thousands of websites across large and small businesses, education, government, non-profits, sciences, media and publishing are using Plone to solve their content management needs. This is supported by a global network of over 300 solution providers in more than 50 countries. Looking for a hosting provider to host your Plone site for you? You can find a list of providers and consultants on plone.net.
We are very proud to be known by the company we keep. Organizations as diverse as NASA, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Nokia, eBay, Novell, the State Universities of Pennsylvania and Utah, as well as the Brazilian and New Zealand governments — all use Plone.
Plone is open on many levels. It runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris — and offers a straightforward installation to get you up and running in minutes. It has been translated into more than 40 languages, and is developed with an unflinching emphasis on usability and standards compliance.
Need a CMS that integrates with Active Directory, Salesforce, LDAP, SQL, Web Services. LDAP or Oracle? Plone does. Need to be sure your website is accessible? Plone meets or exceeds US Government 508 and W3C’s WAI-AA standards.
Worried about security? As an open source product, a large number of developers frequently scrutinize the code for any potential security issues. This proactive approach is better than the wait-and-see approach in proprietary software that relies on keeping security issues a secret instead of resolving them outright.
Based on Python and the Zope libraries, Plone has a technological edge that has has helped it attain the best security track record of any major CMS (Source: CVE). In fact, security is a major reason why many CMS users are switching to Plone.
The market is full of open source content management systems, so it is important to do your homework before choosing one for your organization. Remember that a simple CMS may work out great to start with, but lead to problems with scaling or migration when you need more capability than it can provide. At the other end of the spectrum, a powerful CMS can be so difficult to learn and maintain that it never gains acceptance to users. Make sure the CMS you choose meets your needs today without compromising future growth.
We hope you’ll take the time to learn more about Plone and what it can do for you. We’ve created this site specifically as a gateway to information on how to get started with Plone, as well as information on development, solutions providers, events, news, and the wealth of product add-ons created by the community.
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