Preface

Plone is a powerful web application used mainly for website content management and comprised of many different, but related Python packages. But it wasn't always this way.

Over the years, Plone has grown from just a few packages built on top of the powerful Zope 2 application server, while Zope 2 itself has grown from a single, monolithic package to a collection of smaller, and often reusable Python packages.

All of this hardly matters to Plone's end users, but unfortunately it has been difficult to hide such details from them. Some day that goal may be achieved, but in the meantime there is this book, which aims to clear up some of the confusion.

That confusion mostly surrounds the use of a tool called Buildout, which is used to assemble the various Python packages. Buildout is a fantastic tool for developers, but not such a good choice for end users.

That said, if you are interested in learning about Buildout and how to use it to build Plone sites, then this book is for you.