The origin of Plone is one of community lore. In 1999, founders Alexander Limi and Alan Runyan had a fortuitous meeting on #zope, the IRC channel dedicated to Zope development. Zope is the framework upon which Plone is built. The two of them forged an online friendship based on a mutual love of Zope, Python, and music.

These two men, with too much time on their hands and the encouragement of Paul Everitt (one of the founders of Zope Corporation), built a CMS named after an electronica band with questionable musical talent. In the process, they also gathered a thriving community of people around them. They continue to work in the service of Plone today and to grow the ranks around them.

The last year or so has brought tremendous change to Plone, as we have moved from the Zope 2 architecture to the mixed implementation of Zope 2 and Zope 3. Don't worry too much yet about what this means; suffice it to say that when Plone 3 was released, the ground shifted underneath the feet of Plone users worldwide. This shift not only brought a lot of power to the table, but also introduced a lot of fear, particularly in the hearts of themers. Most of this fear is exaggerated, and this book aims to quell much of this fear. The theming process for Plone may be complex at the moment, but it's still possible to generate beautiful, high-impact themes.

Plone is useful for all kinds of web sites, from large enterprise sites to educational and government sites, and even small environmental sites. I work at an environmental non-profit named ONE/Northwest. (We hosted the 2006 Plone Conference in Seattle.) ONE/Northwest has produced almost 200 attractive, high quality, but generally small Plone sites that empower other environmental groups. These web sites give our clients the tools they need to reach their audiences and to hopefully preserve our natural environment. Every day brings new excitement, revelations, more complex sites, and plenty of ideas on how to improve Plone. As an open source CMS, it's especially thrilling to be able to contribute ideas and put efforts that incrementally improve Plone.

For many members of the Plone community, we stay with it because it's all about contributing and the community. We are a vast and far-flung crowd, yet surprisingly close-knit. At any given point in time on #plone, the IRC channel for Plone users on freenode.net, you can be talking simultaneously to the people in Belgium, South Africa, Australia, Israel, or the United States. Sometimes the community gets together in person to work, sometimes at conferences, but more often at sprints (small gatherings geared toward solving a particular problem). People have sprinted on projects in castles, on archipelagos, on beaches, in the swank offices of Google Corporation and online, all over the world. The community has proven to be extremely welcoming, bright, ambitious, and inclusive to those who are willing to contribute back to the community.

As a themer, I continue to use and improve Plone because it's a rewarding platform with which to work, and because I've witnessed the change in the world it can effect. My personal pet project with Plone is a small non-profit called Safe Passage that helps to educate, feed, and protect children who work in the garbage dumps of Guatemala City. With a very simple (and sadly outdated) theme, and a form-building product called PloneFormGen, Safe Passage has managed to get more than 900 children sponsored, fed, and in school. It's a small, unassuming site, but without Plone, we could not have achieved such a tremendous accomplishment. Plone is a wondrous tool, frustrating at times, but absolutely worth the time spent and valued by the organizations that use it to manage their content and spread their message. From the simple theme I built for Safe Passage to the intricate themes I build now, I've learned that Plone is a deep and sometimes swift river, but not impossible to cross. The best part is that even as you read this book, work is being done in the Plone community to ease the pain of theming. This book is one small step in that direction.

Before we move into the theming portion of this book, let's learn a little more about Plone and why it might be a good choice for your organization.