10 Reasons To Choose Plone CMS for your Web Solution

Digg this post Plone is an open source CMS (Content Management System), recently awarded the Best Other (non-php) Open Source CMS award.

Plone, together with an array of add-on components is used for a variety of needs:

• Websites, extranets, intranets
• E-commerce
• Workflow management
• Blogs, podcasting, videocasting
• Collaborative workspaces like Open Plans

As part of World Plone Day, Friday, November 7, here are 10 compelling reasons for choosing Plone as a web site solution:

1. Stable future. Plone is owned, supported and protected by the Plone Foundation, similar to the Apache Foundation. Growth of Plone in code and community has risen at a steady pace since inception in 2000.
2. Avoids vendor lock-in. Plone uses the same open source license as Linux. This avoids vendor lock-in, expensive licenses, and gives you a predictable future — and the freedom to innovate.
3. Easy to use. Plone’s focus on usability makes it easy for users to manage content. Watch a video to see for yourself.
4. Secure. Security is considered one of Plone’s key strengths. Fine-grained role-based security model secures your content. Plone’s sandbox architecture ensures that intruders will not have access to your server or your network.
5. Standards compliant. Optimized for search engines, works in all major browsers, supports Open ID, support for web services and relational data storage.
6. International. Translated into over 35 languages, including Chinese and right-to-left languages like Russian and Arabic.
7. Solid documentation. Hundreds of how-tos and tutorials. Screencasts on plone.tv. Seven books published on Plone, including an end user manual. A new book on how to get the most out of Plone without touching code on its way. No other Open Source CMS has an end user manual.  You can buy the hard copy or download the PDF for free.
8. MS Desktop integration. No other Open Source CMS has a Microsoft Windows Desktop integration for free. Enfold Desktop enables everyone to have a first class Windows desktop experience.
9. Nestle Plone inside an MS shop. Enfold Proxy enables people to deploy Plone in a possibly hostile to linux IT department. How many Microsoft organizations want to run Apache? Enfold Proxy is *not* free.  It costs money.  But you get support.
10. Separate content management and delivery. Use *any* software to deliver the content from the Plone CMS. Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby. Whatever presentation-tier technologies the customer is most comfortable with can be used.
    Static publishing. Look at http://www.cia.gov/ and http://www.fbi.gov/
    Dynamic delivery.  Look at http://www.povertylaw.org/ and http://www.aci-na.org/ for examples of Entransit.  Using very very simple and fast technologies to serve Plone content dynamically.

Want to know more? See if there is a World Plone Day event happening near you, or visit online:

• Plone.org – is the main site to read more information, download copies, access documentation and products (add-on functionality)
• Plone.net – find a provider that supports Plone, read case studies and press releases, browse the directory of Plone based sites.
• Plone.tv –  a diverse collection of training and interview videos about Plone
• Plonegov.org – a collaborative software ecosystem where government organizations, NGOs and private enterprises work together to share the cost of enhanced capabilities.

Tags: Plone, worldploneday2008