The perfect first job for helping out the Plone community

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!

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