Plone 4 Skinning

Although my focus for web application technology is once again more and more switching from Plone to Pyramid and Java related technologies (like the Google-Web-Toolkit) I just updated two of my contributions to make them work with Plone 4.

The most important one is anthill.skinner (the other one eases exporting content from the ZMI). This extension allows you to easily skin Plone. By skinning I define the process of changing the layout of Plone to one that matches the specifications given by a customer. This process has never been easy when using Plone and I always preferred using a generic skinning mechanism rather than changing Plone templates.

For small to mid sized websites and even for some bigger ones it is easier to just plug in another layout and only adapting parts you need. Until now I’ve accompagnied more than 350 projects using Plone and using a generic skinning mechanism has proved to be very effective in terms of time and resources.

Pros

• No need to understand the complex plone template logic
• You do not have to make so much changes to original layout
• No need to write a new handbook for editors – take any recent plone book because the edit skin stays the same
• Less work when updating to a new Plone version because you didn’t touch much of the templates
• Almost no limitations for your theme/design that could be imposed by the fact that you need to include all the edit functionality (tabs, …) into your theme
• By not having to fiddle with Plone inner logic/templates that much you save much time

Cons

• Editors have no in-place editing – although you can change to the edit view on every context there’s one more click needed
• Including plone portlets into your theme is a little more complex

Download the skinner tool here.