In order to get set up and start theming, we first must get the development environment set up. This generally consists of installing Subversion (optional, but highly recommended), and of course, installing Plone and all of its dependencies.
The importance of version control cannot be underestimated in the development process, especially where teams are concerned. It can also be valuable for a team of one person, if only to keep your product safe and up-to-date in a central location, known as a repository. It's not required, but serious themers will find it invaluable. Subversion is not included by default with a Plone installation.
Subversion is a free/open source version control system originally started by Collabnet: http://www.collab.net/. It manages files and directories and the changes made to them, over time. Subversion, often referred to as "svn", allows you to recover older versions of your data, or examine...