Magic Web Fairies

11:20 Building a Humane CMS with Plone

Joel Burton

Evidently, this is the session to go to if you are interested in humans.

Our inspiration should be less is more
Plone is packed full of features and no site needs them all.

Profile
Focusing on semi-regular content contributor. People who value ease of use over all else.
- Won’t learn much about Plone
- Won’t use system often enough to remember everything
- Ease of use over “bells and whistles”

Goals
Fewer options for content placement
correct choices about content types
power user options just for power users
less geekish complexity
sane workflow/security

How to structure a site
Member’s folder
One way to organize site is by member folder. (We turn this off on all our sites except one internal site but no one uses folder as a place to do more except keep personal notes in their folder)
Very “my documentsy”
Bad URLs
What happens when ownership moves?
Is useful for community sites

How to structure site (2)
Folder like content
Requires users to have permissions here
useful when one person/dept. manages items of that type
example: /events folder

How to structure site (3)
by project / authority
/chemistry
/biology
Location should follow security
generally, the most useful
type-specific folders within
/chemistry/events

Question: users don’t care about urls
we have to be the advocate for them because we understand bad things happen when urls are renamed or changed.

Content in the right place
Restrict what’s addable in folder using “restrict”
link is at bottom of list. if you do only one thing this is the single best thing you can do. Select both addable type and preferred types. the addable type will go under a more more in the list and the preferred types will be listed. Change the descriptions type to fit your users. This will help people understand what the “more” options mean.

this helps with the “no you can’t add the wrong thing” idea

Content in the right place 2
Create specialized folder types
- cloning type in portal_types
- fast and easy
- Creating new Archetype based on other
- more flexible for future
- “Staff Directory” is clone of “folder” (more obvious in search results)
- can be done in archetypes
- can paste in types tool

portal_types, folder type
allowed content types – this is even more important than the adhoc restriction

Question: if you change strings, you will have to retranslate things

Only Folderish stuff at top of site
Never have more than 7 concepts in a place
No individual items, single news items. Only folders go at the top. restrict that only folders can be added at top level

you can restrict what’s addable at the plone site level

Removing “My Folder”
Few sites really want user folders
Just delete the “Members” folder – ther’s no side effects. My folder link goes away. The member folder can be recreated later. You can go under the member data tool and change what you call it (like “staff”)

Specialized Factory Forms
- “”Make more like me”
Helps you direct someone to a certain place and create a certain content type

Obvious choice for content types
“Give things the right title
You can change the title of the type under portal_types. Under the hood it will still have the “programmer name” but to users it will be renamed. If you do this do a catalog refresh. This is where the description is. You get a tooltype mouseover from the description as well.

Same Thing; Different name
Users find “file” confusing
Make separate types:
word doc
powerpoint doc
PDF Doc
This fits peoples brains plus allows separate searching
In the types tool, there’s a field for icon. put image in portal_skins custom

Edit Forms: General
Avoid multiselect boxes
- many people don’t know how to select multiple with control
- list of checkbox is better
- If multiselects are required, explain how to select multiple

Edit forms: dates
People loathe drop-down menus – slower, limited range of dates
Replace with add-on product, DateBox
- Allows textual entry in any form
- Plus ideas like “yesterday”
- immediately turns into canonical format

Edit forms:keywords
most useful tool for organizing sites
Move keywords onto edit form
properties is a ghetto for meta-data.
Call keywords tags to address user fear factor
schemata = default to move

Customizing kupu
Can customize with xml
But easier to do in CSS
#kupu-subscript-button {display: none;}

Remove Button from Kupu
you don’t want definition list, full-screen button (full screen button is esp. confusing)
You might not want tables, left, center, right justify

Kupu style menu
Can add classes per type-of-content – para styles option for wigits

Kupu drawers and your types
New types of content are not discoverable in kupu. go to kupu setup under resource types and ad portal types

Dependent items
Users don’t understand that the image isn’t “in” document
RichDocument keeps images/files inside document

Kupu has ReffieldText type that will catalog images

Power users
make a role for it

Undo
Too complex for most users (I remove this for all but admins)

Properties tab
If you remove keywords then you don’t need it for any but power users

Display menu
Should be removed for power users or changes in the types by giving only one display type

Default page
A tricky concept for many users. often having a body field for folderish item is easier. then you can turn of ability to select default type

Add menu
“restrict” may not be useful. Modify constrain types permission should only be given to power users.

Actions menu
allows people to delete copy and paste. Rename allows people to break links.
Don’t change in permission – some products assume rename capability
Chane in portal_actions and hide in menu

Cut/copy/paste
people can find this confusing. Can add a duplicate option instead.

Contents tab
for some users this may be confusing. Under actions to hide

Sharing tab
should only be shown to power users
or offer a greatly simplified sharing tab

smart folders
too tricky for ordinary users to make
create sample smart folders users can duplicate and modify

keywords
stock sample keywords (make private doc with starter keywords, plus prevents keywords being taken away)
user PloneKeywordManager to clean up keyword space
(will this work with simpleblog?)

http://plonebootcamps.com/resources
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Another session I’m uploading so far after the fact that I hardly remember it. I think we’re getting near brain explosion. Happily Joel’s presentation is available so I need to get that.