Re: Transition Advice

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 05:42:43PM -0400, Jimmy Small wrote:
> Martin Aspeli has written a book that is very much geared to Plone 3.x.
> 
> http://www.packtpub.com/Professional-Plone-web-applications-CMS/book
> 
> Check it out.  I might also answer questions about 2.5->3.0 but I am not
> sure.

It doesn't talk about migration. And, IMHO, it's not a terribly great
book. It's quite advanced and makes very strong assumptions about your
level of expertise in Python, Zope, and Plone. It's full of hand-waving
("now, type in these 4 pages of XML and--see?--it works!")

But it is the only Plone-3 specific book out right now. Several more are
slated over the next year.

> > I have not yet had the opportunity to do any work with Plone 3.x.  However,
> > I would like to upgrade a site now running 2.1 to 3.x sometime this fall and
> > also am about to start a new project soon - it's a very simple site (at
> > least to start) and may take a crack at 3.x then.  My questions are:
> >
> > * Are there any books or good documentation that smooth the transition from
> > the 2.1 or 2.5 (have done some sites with 2.5) to 3.x?  Is there the
> > equivalent to McKay's "The Definitive Guide to Plone"?  It would be
> > fantastic if he or someone else would update that book!
> >
> > * Any advice about how to learn 3.x?

A lot depends on how much "Plone 3" you mean. You can build a Plone site
with straightforward Archetypes, normal ZPTs, etc., and do it almost
exactly the same way under Plone 3 as under Plone 2.x. (And converting
existing AT products requires just a one-line fix in most cases). All of
that stuff works just great and is still the core way to build things in
Plone 3.

However, you can also see "Plone 3" as "learning to make your own new
style portlets [not that that's needed often], learning to re-think your
code into reusable Zope3 components, learning to do all your development
with buildout/eggs/etc". And so on. In which case, there can be a long
learning curve of intermediate and advanced stuff. You can decide how
much of this is useful for you [for example, decompositing your code
into reusable components is great for many things, but conceptual
overkill for client-specific functionality, in many cases.]

The nice thing is that none of that is required. The only thing you
-have- to learn about Plone 3 to use it (that's different from P2) is
theming, since that has, unlike ZPT/Archetypes/etc, changed a bit. You
can learn the core stuff about this in about a day, or less. There's
good docs in the doc center at plone.org on "viewlets", or, better
still, look at the WebLion wiki for some of their integrator
documentation.

Then, as you get comfy with your new site, you can learn about new
topics, as desired.

> > * This is for Joel - sorry I missed the bootcamp in July.  Any other such
> > courses planned?  Is there a course specifically for someone who is not new
> > to plone but wants to learn 3.x?

I've taught a few times a 2d course on "Plone 3 Techniques", which is
exactly that. I don't have any upcoming version of it, unfortunately,
but it's not impossible I will in the future.

I am teaching a 2d course on "theming Plone 3 sites" before the
conference.

I don't have any east coast bootcamps planned at the moment, but, this
fall/early winter, it looks like I'll be in SF, Boston, and New Zealand.

> > * How bad is the migration from  2.5?  from 2.1?

Not too bad, actually. 2.0->2.1 is the only painful migration.

Of course, it always depends on your 3rd party products. If you rely on
products that haven't been migrated, you've a harder problem. There's
good notes on upgrades at plone.org.

> > David

Sorry I missed you when I was in DC, David. Hope things are well!

- j.