Tag: volunteer

Meet your new Planet Plone zoo keeper

Posted on by in Pursuits

Great response to my invitation for someone to step in as the new Planet Plone zoo keeper. Thanks to Lukasz Lakomy, Ian Hood, David Little and Rob Porter for responding. Plone community, here is your chance to find something small and needed for these willing volunteers. 🙂

I’ll now introduce to you your new contact for getting your blog on Planet Plone, a guy whose voice is destined for radio (or a Plone podcast?), John DeRosa!

John Derosa, new Planet Plone zoo keeper
John Derosa, new Planet Plone zoo keeper

John is Director of Web Development for Fisher Communications, where he’s working on new technology initiatives, and doing some Phone theming and customization in an open-source environment. He’s a coder at heart, and enjoys Python quite a bit. Before Fisher, he worked in a number of start-ups, the most successful of which was Singingfish. He lives in Seattle. You can find more details about him on his blog or on LinkedIn.

John looks forward to connecting with Plone people and helping out in this simple but important job.

Planet Plone is the blogging voice of the Plone community. Not following Planet Plone? Add the feed to your favourite feed reader. Want your Plone blog posts on Planet? Submit your name, blog url and feed url to the Plone.org issue tracker. I’m sure John will take good care of you.

The perfect first job for helping out the Plone community

Posted on by in Pursuits

Plone has been good to you. You’re earning a living thanks to the efforts of many, and perhaps your sanity has been saved on a few occasions by the kind folks in the #plone chat room. You’ve been thinking for a while about some way to help out, but can’t take on anything too big, and your Plone coding fu is in its infancy.

Well, have I got the perfect job for you!

Become the Planet Plone zoo keeper

Planet Plone is the blogging voice of the Plone community. There are now 115+ blogs registered with Planet Plone. People share all kinds of tips, ideas, rants and news on upcoming events through the Planet. A big thanks to Wichert and others who have done most of the leg work to make Planet Plone what it is today.

Not following Planet Plone? Add the feed to your favourite newsreader.

The Planet needs someone to process requests for blogs to be added or changes made to existing ones.

Maintaining Planet Plone is super simple. Each month, there are at most 2-3 requests to add or change a blog. Trac is used to manage blog submissions. You receive an email notification whenever a ticket is submitted.

All changes are made in one config file. Each entry looks like this:

[http://feeds.feedburner.com/KirkThoughts-Plone]
name = Gerry J Kirk
link = http://www.gerrykirk.net

The first line is the content feed, the second is the name of the author, and lastly a link to the author’s web site.

If you are still with me, then congratulations, you are qualified.

But wait, there’s more

For the more technically inclined (that’s not me), you can if you wish maintain the software that runs Planet Plone. Right now, Alex Clark (aclark on IRC) and Lennart Regebro (regebro on IRC) leap to action whenever there are small fires to put out.

How do I sign up?

Those interested can contact me directly. I’m the current zoo keeper, looking to move into other Plone jobs, marketing in particular. It’s been a fun ride, but now its time to move on to something more substantial.

How can I add my blog to Planet Plone?

Right now you have to go to the plone.org Trac ticketing system, register an account, then create a new ticket. Include the following information:

  • Your first and last name
  • Web site address
  • Feed address to Plone community-related content. If you also blog about other topics not related to the Plone community, then please provide a filtered feed, like all posts with a Plone tag or category.
  • Select Planet Plone from the Component list

I have some ideas on how to improve the process, we’ll see what is possible. Stay tuned!