Book Image

Plone 3.3 Site Administration

Book Image

Plone 3.3 Site Administration

Overview of this book

In the past few years, we have seen some dramatic changes in the way Plone sites are being developed, deployed, and maintained. As a result, developing and deploying sites, changing their default settings, and performing day to day maintenance tasks can be a challenge. This book covers site administration tasks, from setting up a development instance, to optimizing a deployed production site, and more. It demonstrates how-to perform these tasks in a comprehensive way, and walks the user through the necessary steps to achieve results.We have divided the subject of Plone site administration into three categories: development, deployment, and maintenance. We begin by explaining how a Plone site is built, and how to start using it through the web. Next, we add features by installing add-on products, focusing on themes, blogging, and other common enhancements. After the basics of developing and deploying a Plone site are covered, the book covers the basics of maintaining it.Further, throughout the book we preview some new technologies related to Plone site administration, available now as add-ons to the current Plone release. Finally, we will cover a variety of techniques to help you optimize your site's performance.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Plone 3.3 Site Administration
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Index

Automating database backups


Of course, no one wants to perform manual backups on a regular basis.

On Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux, we can use Buildout to configure a cron entry for us. On Windows, since there is no cron, we can use the Task manager (outside our Buildout) instead.

Using z3c.recipe.usercrontab on Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux

To configure cron entries with Buildout, you can use z3c.re.backup (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.rec.recipe.usercrontab).

In 05-deployment-maintenance-cron.cfg, we have:

[buildout]
extends = 05-deployment-maintenance-backup.cfg
parts += cron

[cron]
recipe = z3c.recipe.usercrontab
command = ${buildout:directory}/bin/backup
times = 0 0 * * * 

We have added a cron section, defined recipe and command we want to run, and the number of times we want to run it. If you are not familiar with the cron syntax, refer to the following:

Field

Allowed values

Minute

0-59

Hour

0-23

Day of the month

1-31

Month

1-12 (or names, see below)

Day of the week...