Deployment and Developer Environment

Buildout

For: Best way to install and configure zope and plone

How: Managing projects with Buildout,  Creating a buildout for your project

Load Balancing: Varnish + Haproxy + ZEO + Supervisord

For: high traffic sites. large numbers of custom papers simultaneous logins. processor intensive sites.

How:  Uberbuildout

Reverse Proxy: cachefu + varnish + buildout

For: Optimise cache settings for performance. Create a production environment.

How: plone.recipe.varnish 

Managing Python Modules with Eggs

For: To add new python modules that can be used by Plone and Plone related add-ons essay services. Modern python packages are distributed in a format called eggs.

How: easy_install

Paster + Zopeskel

For: Generating boilerplate code for add-ons and Plone themes

How: Readme, Create new eggs and packages quickly with paster

generic_setup profiles

For: To configure your plone instance when installing your egg

How:Understanding and Using GenericSetup in Plone, The Generic Setup Tool

Unit Testing

For: To test your code without starting zope

How: Unit testing Plone

PDB

For: Best practice when you need find out exactly how the your code, plone code or 3rd party code is running.

How: PDB and plone

Sharing your code using eggs

For:  distributing your code to shared repositories

How: jarn.mkrelease

Basics of Python, Zope, Zope3 and Plone

Python

For: pretty much everything

How: QuickRef BeginnersGuide Python List Comprehension. Python Lambda. Python decorators. Python dir(). Python help(). Debugging with PDB.

Interfaces

For: A way of assigning behaviour to an object, the simplest application is if you want to "tag" an object as being of a certain type.

How: Interfaces and why they matter,  Why is my new viewlet showing up in other skins on other plone instances?
Example Usage:Adapters, Applying a custom view to a specific folder

Components

For: Discrete collections of code that work together to perform a distinct function (e.g. A portlet, A viewlet, A view, A resource etc...). They usually have specific permissions associated with them.
How: A component is most commonly defined with ZCML, Component Wiring and ZCML, Viewlets,Portlets and Other Components, Anatomy of a Portlet,  Making Components Theme Specific

Configuration using ZCML

For: Defining and manipulating components

How: Component Wiring and ZCML,Creating a minimalistic Zope 3 View

Zope3 Adapters

For: adapters mediate between abstract APIs and concrete objects

How:Adapters , Five Tutorial: step 5  Slides

ZODB and pickling

For: Building utilities, content types or other kinds of persistance resume writers. Understanding differences to RDBMs architecture

How: ZODB/ZEO Programming Guide

portal_catalog

For: Creating custom searches of content. Indexing addition fields

How:Portal Catalog Queries

Zope Security

For: security checking, creating new permissions

How: Zope Book: Users and security

Object Publishing + Acquisition

For: Url traversal, request marshaling. How urls connect to your code

How: Object Traversal reference Martin on MVC in Zope/Plone

BrowserView Class

For: Where your controller code goes. In MVC terms, View = template (normally zpt), Controller is the BrowserView class, which gets linked to urls via zcml. A typical call would be: URL traversal -> BrowserView -> Template -> BrowserViewClass -> Model (AT class or sql or whatever).

Replaces: FormController (.cpy), python scripts, controller methods in AT classes, controller methods in templates.

How: Tutorial

Customisation

Zope Page Templates (ZPT)

For: Customize viewlets, forms, portlets

How: Reference

CSS

For: To theme a plone site

How: Elemental reference

PyPI and PSC

For: where to get add ons for plone

How:

plone.browserlayer

For: Lets views be specific just to the installed product

How:  Browser layers

archetypes.schemaextender

For: Add fields or metadata to existing content types

How: archetypes.schemaextender

Register Indexes with the Catalog

For: adding custom indexes to the portal_catalog or other zcatalog

How: plone.indexer

Viewlet

For:To customise certain areas of a plone page such as the page header. Components that can be embedded into a page template, they are associated with Viewlet Managers. 

How: Anatomy of a Viewlet

Viewlet Manager

For: A special "block" within a page template that can hold a Viewlet.

How: Creating a New Viewlet Manager, Anatomy of a Viewlet Manager

Actions (and the actions tool)

For: Add links that appear on most pages

How: Document Actions (actions.xml)

@@manage-viewlets + GS export + paster plone3_theme + skins + css

For: best current solution for a plone theming process. Skins should be used for js, css and images.

How:Tutorial  best practices for OOTB themeing

PloneFormGen

For: Create a dynamic Standalone Form . ie Fields can be changed TTW.

How: Simple SQL CRUD With PloneFormGen, Tutorial: Creating Online Forms with PloneFormGen

Remember + Membrane

 For: Create users that can be managed using workflows, make it easy to customize the registration form, improve "searchability" of members

How: Third Party Product Integration: Remember

Application/Add-on Development

Archetypes + paster create -t archetype

For: Creating new content type . Creating forms with values that persist like a database. 

How: archetypes quickref | archetypes using paster | Zopeskel contenttypes

HTML Forms + Argument Marshaling

For: Creating either a very simple or highly customised Standalone Form  

How: Object Publising reference

zc.formlib

For: Create a Standalone Form with auto generated widgets

How: Readme

Upcoming: z3c.form but not used enough yet

Zope3 Utilities + local utilities + componentregistry.xml

For: Holding singleton/global persistent data  o global methods. replaces portal_properties and plone tools.

How: martins book has the only decent local utility tuturial I can find.  mrtopf:zope3-utilities