A user’s guide to plone - Thomas Lotze (plone gebruikersdag 2008)¶

Thomas Lotze (gocept) is one of the authors of a user's guide to plone , a end-user manual for plone. Gocept needed manuals for several plone projects, so they decided to make one generic manual. A manual that could be extended with explanation on customer-specific functionality. The original version (2005) was in German, recently the English version was added.

This year's update saw a new author: Jan-Ulrich Hasecke, who was a much more experienced writer. The quality and quantity of the text was thus increased. This also meant a new English translation.

Another change is the distribution method: it is available on-line and in paper form (instead of only in paper form). They're interested in more translations and they're planning more frequent updates (which are allowed because you can download those revised versions).

The book is useful for end users without prior knowledge and for trainers who teach plone: this is also a challenge, as you have two audiences. Also there are various ways in which you can explain plone: you can explain the system in an abstract way or you can do it visually. The solution was to split it in an explanatory tutorial part and a reference part.

The printed book sells at Euro 25, 20% of which is donated to the plone foundation! (Order it at gocept).

Downloads are covered by the creative commons attribution, non-commercial share-alike license.

There's also a trainer's program for the book. You can then use the book in your training. Students of course have the free downloads. If you find an error in the book, it'll get fixed right away. Euro 5 per student.

A nice option is to use the book for your own customers: you can get read access to the LaTeX source code and add chapters for the specific functionality you added for your customer. That's Euro 1000 once and 500 per update.