Chapter 1. Theming Plone 3: An Overview

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Plone or this is your first introduction to it, Plone is a content management system (CMS). A CMS is a tool that enables webmasters to manage their web sites' content easily through the web (TTW). Plone provides additional support by auto-generating navigation elements, making content searchable, allowing for multilingual content, handling permissions and security, and much, much more. In comparison to other CMS platforms, Plone is extremely stable, secure, and is actively working toward increased adoptability.

One of the most common needs with a CMS web site is the ability to change the look and feel. As with any framework, building a design around a CMS introduces special challenges. With Plone, the process of separating content from presentation is not entirely straightforward. By the end of this book, you will have the knowledge to create your own robust Plone themes and understand where the line is drawn between content and presentation. Specifically, this book is geared toward web designers with little or no knowledge of Plone who need to theme a Plone web site.