hi everyone,

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?

* 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?

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

Thanks much.

David

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.

Cheers,
Jimmy

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 6:40 PM, David Diskin
<david.diskin(at)aliencamel.com>wrote:
[...]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 05:42:43PM -0400, Jimmy Small wrote:[...]

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.
[...]

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.
[...]

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.
[...]

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.
[...]

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

- j.

Joel Burton <joel(at)joelburton.com> writes:
[...]

Thanks for voicing that, especially the last -- I thought it was just
me.  "Type in these 4 pages of incantations and poof -- a syntax
error", or "poof, it doesn't work because you used an underscore
instead of a space in the ZCML, but a space instead of an underscore in
the Interface".  Silent failure is very very frustrating to debug.
[...]

Very appealing.

I tried using ZopeSkel to create an Archetype and content type
recently, and it really helped with the aspeli-esque boilerplate.
But it still doesn't feel very Zope3 componenty.
 [...]

Buildout has saved our bacon: we started with hand-groan [sic]
scripts, then buildit, then settled on buildout.  It can grow to
handle big big projects.  But you can start small, like with the one
the Unified Installer provides.

There are other non-Plone projects I've got that I'd like to wrap with
buildout for repeatable deployment. It's good stuff.  Definitely worth
learning. 
[...]

Thanks for the pointer!

Joel - Thanks much for the great and thorough reply!  You're the best!

Glad to hear there are more Plone-3 books being planned.  I too had  
bought Martin's book but quickly saw it was nothing like McKay's and  
pitched at way too high a level.  I'll definitely look into your pre- 
conference course.

Thanks again.

David
On Aug 19, 2008, at 6:07 PM, Joel Burton wrote:
[...][...][...]
>>> 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?[...]
>>> other such
>>> courses planned?  Is there a course specifically for someone who  
>>> is not new
>>> to plone but wants to learn 3.x?[...]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 07:09:01PM -0400, Chris Shenton wrote:[...]

Absolutely. If you are learning from Martin's book, that's great--but
it's helpful to try out the new paster recipes in ZopeSkel, too,
as those are more up-to-date, commented, and considered "standard
practice".

Also, feel free to try http://paster.joelburton.com. which
provides
a nice web front-end onto this ;)
[...]

buildout rocks. It's a bit hard-going for beginners, but I think that's
going to fix itself with the new buildout-based installers for 3.2. It
has such lovely promise for new-to-Plone people. SteveM is making
fantatic progress on the unified installer for 3.2.

Best,

- j.
[...]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 10:07:21PM +0000, Joel Burton wrote:[...]

I find it most useful in e-copy form, to search for specific terms and get good
code examples back. While it is complex, I still recommend it for that reason. 
That and, *cough*, PACKT is one of our sponsors for Plone Conference 2008 ;-)
</shameless_plug>
[...]
[...]