PloneArticle

› A complete end-user content type for Plone, with images and attachments ‹

PloneArticle is a new content type for Plone. It offers you the same features as the standard Document content type you already know from Plone, but in addition it allows you to join attachments and images directly to the document.

Management Tabs:

Attachments :

In this tab, you can add file attachments (pdf, doc, zip, ... etc.) from your file system so readers can download them. All attachments are uploaded and become a part of the PloneArticle object. They are even fully indexed together with the other text fields of the document.

In the view mode, click on the preview link to have a quick preview of the attachment in your browser.

Images:

In this tab, you can add images (jpg, gif, png, ... etc.) from your file system so readers can view them displayed next to your article. All images are uploaded and become a part of the PloneArticle object. Their description is fully indexed together with the other text fields of the document.

When a PloneArticle is viewed, thumbnail images are displayed next to the article text. The layout depends on the display model you choose in the model tab, which is discussed next. A click on the image displays a popup window that contains the image at its original size. Display order of images can be changed by using the arrows next to the thumbnails.

Model:

You can specify the model to be used to display the article. The difference between the models are the order and position used for the images and attachments.

Edit

In the edit tab, you can use the wysiwyg editor for editing the main text of the PloneArticle. (You need the VisualEditor Product installed and activated for this feature to work) The wysiwyg editor offers multiple tools to structure your text, colorize it, insert image or link. Very simple to use, it looks like an ordinary text editor (Microsoft Word for example), so beginners can use it. You can quickly copy and paste text from a word file or another web page into the editor without completely loosing the page style. For expert users, or users that know how to write structured markup, editing an article is possible in pure html mode.

Articles summary

A Page Template called 'PloneArticleSummary' is provided as an example to have a brief summary of the five most recent published articles in a website, along with their first image if available.

PloneArticle has been designed by the Ingeniweb team.

And, of course, it's Open-Source (GPL licence).

How does-it work ?

PloneArticle is a new content type that can be added by authorised users in a folder.

After having selected it in the items list, the user will have to fill in some basic information, such as the title, the description and the body text. The body text can be written with an editor. To understand how to create an article and learn to use the editor, we advice you to refer to its documentation included in the end-user Plone documentation.

Indexing in the ZCatalog :
When added, an article is referenced in the ZCatalog. This means : its text, title, meta information but also the information concerning its attachments. If you have created an article with a pdf attachment, the search will also look for the text into the pdf file.

Addition for new content types developers :
There is a module called BaseArchetypesArticle.py that contains a base class called 'BaseArchetypesArticle'. If you want to implement an Archetypes-based content type that features images and attachments as PloneArticle, you just have to subclass this base class into your own product. This requires Plone 2 and Archetypes 1.2.2 or later.

**Note :** This addition does not impact the PloneArticle content type. You can ignore this module if you don't have the need mentioned above.

Is it compatible with...

CMF ? No.
Plone ? Yes.
My existing Plone instance ? Yes of course. It is just a new type can be added in a folder by selecting it and choose 'add item'.
How can i add a PloneArticle ? Under the Plone site, in a folder of Plone where you have the rights. Select PloneArticle in the list of item and click 'add item'.

Download

PloneArticle is shipped as a tarball for Plone. See The Ingeniweb Projects for more information.

Official releases

Releases are now hosted by SourceForge. The latest release can always be found here .

2.0Beta1 (2003/12/18) : Plone2 compatibility
1.1 (2003/10/21) : Created a PloneArticleSummary template to explain usage of getFirstThumbTag() script. Improved cacheability of thumbs. Minor fixes on models. Now works without ImageTagHotfix.
1.0 (2003/09/17) : Pretty models management Upload of unindexable documents (ie. protected PDFs, ...) now works with latest ZAttachmentAttribute version.

CVS

You can checkout the CVS anonymously with the following commands:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ingeniweb login 
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ingeniweb co PloneArticle

You can browse CVS at Sourceforge.

Screenshots

Here comes a few screenshots of PloneArticle administration interface.

Management screen where to add a PloneArticle