Rick Hurst Web Developer in Bristol, UK
MenuI complained to servage that my site had got a bit slow and they offered to move me to their newest cluster. Apologies for any interruptions in service. It seems to be much faster now, plus I now have native (rather than CGI) support for php5, which is handy because I am trying out ActiveCollab. The move seemed to be fairly seamless – I didn’t have to move any of my own files or restore any databases so i’m a happy customer again.
I am really pleased to say that the Plone Skinning presentation last night was a success! About 30 local web designers/developers and people interested in using Plone turned up – a much higher attendance than my previous “Plone Demo” talk. I used the Plone S5 product to create a simple set of slides with a few bullet points to keep me from jumping around too much, but it was mostly a hands on presentation demonstrating a bit of basic customisation via the ZMI, then the process for creating a filesystem based skin.
I ran plone locally and used dreamweaver (in code view with large fonts) to do ZPT editing to keep things familiar for those designers who may be scared by the idea of terminals and Emacs!
I also tried to dispell the “all plone sites look the same” myth by taking a random design I had knocked up as a static html page and inserting the minimum possible ZPT markup to make it function as a front end plone main template rendering the body content and portlets (with none of the plone CSS).
The Q&A was really good – it ranged from basic questions about templating to “can plone do….?” type questions. I think I managed to field them all fairly well – i’ll have to wait to see the video (coming soon) to listen back for any clangers I may have made. I was disappointed however that all the free beer had gone by the end of the Q&A – a conspiracy maybe? “psstt… keep Rick talking while we drink all the beer – ask him if there is a cow-milking module available…”.
The event was sponsored by Knowledge West (room/projector hire/buffet) and beer kindly provided by Team Rubber.
I have volunteered to give another Plone related skillswap at the Watershed in Bristol (UK), on 16th January. The previous one (a general plone demo) went down well, and this time I am going to cover the basics of skinning a plone site, from basic Through The Web (TTW) customisation, to creating an installable skin product. I think it will be streamed live – check here for details. If you are in the Bristol area come along (it’s free)!
I am going to rig up a device that gives me an electric shock every time I say the word “umm..”, to train me up abit better for this public speaking lark..
Also regarding
“I am going to rig up a device that gives me an electric shock every time I say the word “umm..”, to train me up abit better for this public speaking lark.. “
Find a Toastmasters club near you , (Bristol Toastmasters club) to improve your public speaking.
Web developers 2007-01-10 10:52:39
Interesting but a bit drastic. There was a guy who tried something like that with a wrist watch back in the 60’s. He wanted a little shock, not much more than a watch battery back then would provide. He woke up dead or didn’t wake up as the case may be.
There are better ways to reprogram the brain. Some will even argue that you can use the and-uhs to sound natural. The best is to just slow down, have a pause to allow what you said to sink in, and let the thoughts flow.
Best wishes and how ever you may fare, may you fare well.
Jonathan
Jonathan Steele, RN 2007-01-10 12:03:32
Can you advise on a Toastmaster’s club in Bristol please?
Thanks.
Kind regards
Meera
meera kumar 2007-02-07 12:27:32
Any chance you could make the hacked main_template.pt available to look at?
Shane Graber 2007-01-17 13:35:33
Congratulations for this successfull event. Is there any Screencast available for the Plone comunity ?
Norbert M Haigermoser 2007-01-17 12:01:07
Yes the presentation was videoed and will be put online in the near future – I will post a link on my blog when it is ready.
Rick 2007-01-17 12:06:58
sure – http://www.rickhurst.co.uk/code/minimal_main_template.pt.txt
in fact the doctype slot and top slot aren’t strictly necessary here, but this shows the basics of rendering the body content and portlets (just cut and pasted from plone default main_template.
word of warning though, as this doesn’t render any links to places like the prefs_portalskin_form or the ZMI, inexperienced users may lock themselves out if not careful! Having a minimal template like this is only intended for where you use a seperate skin (i.e. usually Plone Default) for editing.
Rick 2007-01-17 14:48:17
Looking forward to seeing the screencast of this event when its ready, especially after recently watching the video on the first Plone event which was great – any idea when this might be up? 🙂
David 2007-02-25 11:03:02
I’ve been nagging the guy who is sorting the video – he is trying to get it sorted but has a genuine lack of editing time available at the moment i’m afraid 🙁
Rick 2007-02-25 19:54:59
It’s look something interesting. May I know where i should get the detail of Plone Skinning Information
Ritz 2007-12-27 02:24:30