[Plone-UI] How easy is it to customise Plone, really?

Veda Williams veda at onenw.org
Fri Sep 19 17:12:23 UTC 2008


Agreed. This is actually the sort of the approach I¹m trying to use in my
book, though I need to be more clear about a few things. Even if you don¹t
get the core concepts of Zope, knowing where to fine plone.app.layout and
plone.app.portlets and where to put stuff once you have it is half the
battle. 


On 9/19/08 2:45 AM, "Espen Moe-Nilssen" <espen at medialog.no> wrote:

> I little about how I think of it (to keep it simple)
> =THE APPROACH I WOULD TAKE T0 LEARN IT
> 
> 1) How it looks (css)
> 2) Where stuff is, for exmple you want a navigaion meny or a searchbox
> (portlets viewlets etc)
> 3) What (thing you have to make or install)
> 4) Making the theme "a product".
> 
> I would start with this:
> (.... it is possible to do most of 1-3 TTW (through the web).)
> 1) do all css in ploneCustom.css (you find it and customize it)
> 2) you move things around and hides with:
>     http://yoururl/@@manage-viewlets 
>     http://yourpage/@@manage-portlets
> 
> After you have managed to make a site look like you want, I would start to
> learn 3 and 4.
> 
> (=css is the first thing you will have to learn)
> 
> 
> Den 18. sep. 2008 kl. 10.34 skrev David Little:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Just to add that if you're not too put off by the initial complexities
>> of Plone theming, then it's definitely worth checking out Anne
>> Bowtell's Plone theming guide on Plone.org:
> 
> who wouldnt ?
> 
> 
>> 
>> http://plone.org/documentation/manual/theme-reference
>> 
>> It's pretty big but it's a reference more than a tutorial.
>> 
>> As for tables: in the theme I'm working on at the moment, I just
>> customised the main_template file and replaced the table statements
>> with <div>s. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't do this and I
>> wouldn't be put off my those developers who tell you not to change
>> main_template (if Joel Burton and Alex Limi say it's alright, then
>> that's fine by me).
>> 
>> Finally, if the Plone site you have to work on follows the basic
>> layout of "out of the box" Plone you could just add your own styles in
>> ploneCustom.css, although as already suggested, there's only so far
>> you'll be able to get with this approach.
>> 
>> Best wishes,
>> David
>> 
>> 2008/9/17 Veda Williams <veda at onenw.org>:
>>  
>>> I think that you need to be savvy, but you don't need to be a programmer.
>>> You won't get far just using CSS to skin Plone, though. You also need to be
>>> able to move stuff around, which requires understanding some fairly dense
>>> concepts and some light programming.
>>> 
>>> If you really want this project, you will need to read up on the background
>>> of Plone (Definitive Guide to Plone -- outdated, but conceptually good) to
>>> understand how skin layers, acquisition, and TAL templating work.
>>> 
>>> After that, you'll need to get your head wrapped around the idea of Zope 3
>>> components (Martin Aspeli's book will come in handy here). Don't get too
>>> hung up here: A lot of theming comes down to knowing where stuff is and
>>> understanding where to put it.
>>> 
>>> You'll also need these two tutorials:
>>> 
>>> Create a Theme Product: http://plone.org/documentation/how-to/use-paster
>>> 
>>> Move Stuff Around:
>>> http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/customizing-main-template-viewlets
>>> 
>>> Since you say that you are not a Plone programmer, you have to make a
>>> decision as to whether you're willing to make the time investment to learn
>>> Plone. I'm not sure I would bother learning all of this for just one
>>> project. This isn't like building sites with Dreamweaver, but it's
>>> incredibly rewarding. I wouldn't go back to Dreamweaver for any amount of
>>> money.
>>> 
>>> If you show us what you have in mind, we can give you an idea of what will
>>> be difficult. If you have a lot of stuff happening in the center of the page
>>> -- which amounts to custom templating -- that will increase the difficulty.
>>> If it's not too complex, we can probably walk you through the steps if you
>>> need help.
>>> 
>>> In the meantime, my suggestion is that if you can read these two tutorials
>>> and it doesn't scare the hell out of you, you've got a good chance of
>>> succeeding:
>>> 
>>> http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/buildout
>>> http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/customizing-main-template-viewlets
>>> 
>>> - Veda
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 9/17/08 11:04 AM, "diegorubert" <diegorubert at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>  
>>>> 
>>>> Depends on what level of customization do you wants...
>>>> Simple to low-medium customizations or most of visual changes can be made
>>>> only with css, but heavy (me, for example) you need at least algorithms
>>>> knowledge...
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Katya wrote:
>>>>  
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm about to quote for a job which uses Plone so will need to get to grips
>>>>> with it on some level. Now I'm a designer, absolutely nothing techie about
>>>>> me - XHTML and CSS, yes, programming languages definitely not.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Can anyone tell me how easy it is for a non-techie to customise Plone? I
>>>>> have read a couple of articles which suggest that with no programming
>>>>> experience you are better off using the default XHTML template and simply
>>>>> editing the CSS. Is this true?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>  
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> UI mailing list
>>> UI at lists.plone.org
>>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ui
>>> 
>>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> David Little
>> www.littled.net
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> UI mailing list
>> UI at lists.plone.org
>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/ui
>>  
> 
> 


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