Plone alternatives

Hi all,

This question has already been asked a thousand times on the internet, but I haven’t yet been able to find a good answer for it.

Here at my work, my cooleague and I have been in love with Plone (and ModX) for many years now.

We have build up quite an extensive knowledge base containing 200+ documents by now.

However we have a big problem. Plone is build on Zope+Python (sort of) and neither of us knows a lot about any of these. Or to be honest, we don’t know anything.

We are therefore looking for alternatives to Plone, build in PHP, that to some extent offers some of the same functionality as Plone.

Do you guys think that ModX is a valuable candidate for a task like this?

My biggest concern would be that the system would die when start to add too much content to it. Is this true?

Not if you use Revolution, and it sounds like this is a job for it.

From what I’ve seen and read within the forums MODx Revolution would suit, Evolution will be marketed for simple sites while Revolution will be Enterprise level. As you already have a good background with MODx try-out Revolution and see if its suitable.

Quote from: larsb at Sep 04, 2009, 12:55 PM

We are therefore looking for alternatives to Plone, build in PHP, that to some extent offers some of the same functionality as Plone.

Do you guys think that ModX is a valuable candidate for a task like this?

MODx definitely has some of the same features, though I’m not aware of all the latest features in Plone; are there any particular features that are must-have’s for you?

Quote from: larsb at Sep 04, 2009, 12:55 PM

My biggest concern would be that the system would die when start to add too much content to it. Is this true?

As others mentioned, if properly partitioned using the "Contexts" feature, you can build sites as large as your server resources can handle in Revolution without worrying about bringing it to it’s knees. Contexts can handle, by default, somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 MODx Web Resources (formerly known as Documents) each in typical server environments using the default file-based caching implementation. Other cache implementations, like the one included for Memcached, would have different constraints more sensitive to available server resources. But we’re also working on ways to disable the Context caching mechanism completely for specific Contexts, post-2.0.0 release, which would allow an almost infinite number of Resources in those Contexts. This would rely totally on the individual Resource caches and/or the new Database Result Set caching feature in Revo to reduce/prevent database access when constructing the individual Resource URLs in those Contexts, which is the primary purpose of the Context caches.

As an alternative approach, especially if you have PHP developers/skills available, you could construct your Knowledge Base as a custom database table (or tables) with a single (or a few) Resource( s ) in MODx serving as distinct views into your custom data model using custom developed Snippets of PHP and other Content Elements you can use to construct your Resource( s ).

Hi all of you, and thanks for the feedback.

I am very happy to hear that you all see ModX as a candiate to Plone.

MODx definitely has some of the same features, though I’m not aware of all the latest features in Plone; are there any particular features that are must-have’s for you?

Some of the reasons why we chose Plone in the first place was:

Collections (also known as Smart Folders):
Collections is basically just a saved search which will dynamically add new content to it’s folder whenever this becomes availiable. I guess you could do something like that in ModX?

Pull multiple documents together in one document:
Example, all documents within a container gets shown on the containers own page.
This is already possible with Ditto, which was one of the first things that made me think of ModX.

User dashboard / Home folder:
In Plone, each user has his/hers own dashboard where ’favourite’ documents, rss feeds etc. can be stored. Futhermore you can enhance this with webdav for a close integration between your desktop and dashboard.
Furthermore every user in Plone has his/hers own Home Folder where you can publish your own documents etc.

i18n:
Plone has very good support for i18n which is great for us since the users of this Knowledge Base are divided into 7 languages. (All content however wil be published in English only).

Presentation mode:
Plone offers presentation mode, where you are able to display documents as slides. This is very good during online sessions across countries, or when you are doing tutorials etc.

Powerful live search:
Plone probably has the best built-in Iive search that I have ever seen. Anything can be found, and live reults are displayed with a relevance in %, full titles and descriptions if you wish.

Robust
When setup right Plone is very robust, and is able to handle very large amounts of data. The biggest challenge has so far been to find a candidate able to do the same in PHP. Now it seems as though this search has come to an end

Some of these features are more of a nice-to-have than need-to-have, but since Plone had all of it (out-of-the-box) we chose that. Problem is however, as earlier stated, that Zope is quite a nightmare to manage when you don’t know anything about it. Secondly, yes we have alot of PHP programming resources in-house, making this a desired platform to migrate to.

As others mentioned, if properly partitioned using the "Contexts" feature, you can build sites as large as your server resources can handle in Revolution without worrying about bringing it to it’s knees. Contexts can handle, by default, somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 MODx Web Resources (formerly known as Documents) each in typical server environments using the default file-based caching implementation. Other cache implementations, like the one included for Memcached, would have different constraints more sensitive to available server resources. But we’re also working on ways to disable the Context caching mechanism completely for specific Contexts, post-2.0.0 release, which would allow an almost infinite number of Resources in those Contexts. This would rely totally on the individual Resource caches and/or the new Database Result Set caching feature in Revo to reduce/prevent database access when constructing the individual Resource URLs in those Contexts, which is the primary purpose of the Context caches.

I’m afraid that I am neither a developer or a programmer, so I only understood some of the things you wrote.
I know that alot has happened since evolution/revolution came out (still a bit confused about the difference of these to), and I have only been playing with it for a few hours. Next step is definetely to get more in depths with this.
Where can I read more about ’Context’?

Thank you for all the help.

That’s another great thing about the ModX community. You don’t need 12 years of math studies behind you, or a degree in being pedantic when asking for help. With Plone however, I found it to be alot harder to get help.

Hi larsb,

Where can I read more about ’Context’?

maybe you’ll find some useful information in the new Revolution Documentation PDF:
http://modxcms.com/assets/documents/docs/20090904-revolution-docs.pdf

Or directly in the online version @ http://svn.modxcms.com/docs/display/revolution/Contexts