Download Plone 3 Theming

Setting up your Development Environment
While using buildout seems like a lot of overhead for themers (and in fact, it can
seem downright scary), Plone has made it easy by distributing the Plone installers
with buildout by default. Also, theme products are now egg-based, and can be easily
installed just like any other Python package—generally, just by adding a few lines of
code to a configuration file.
We will take advantage of the default buildout generated by Plone, although it is
possible to create buildout environments specific to your own needs separate from
the installer. It's not important to understand everything about buildout, but with a
few key pointers, it's relatively simple for themers to get started. Much of buildout is
documented on plone.org, but the goal in this chapter is to show themers only the
pieces they need to care about.
Understanding the terminology
Before we begin, we need to get a general introduction to some of the terminology
associated with Plone development. Don't worry if the terms sound overly technical;
in many cases, themers do not need to know about these terms in much detail.
Buildout:
A buildout is a self-contained environment where you can manage the dependencies
(including Zope and Plone and any third-party products or libraries you need) and
custom code for your project. Even if you are not planning on writing any custom
code, the buildout approach is an easy way to install Plone in a robust, well-tested
manner. It is documented thoroughly on plone.org and by Jim Fulton of Zope
Corporation at http://buildout.zope.org/. When you install Plone, you are
automatically given a working buildout.
Zope installation:
This is what you get by downloading and compiling Zope, or using one of the binary
Zope installers. Downloading Plone and installing it gives you a Zope installation
with Plone sitting on top of that installation. Zope is the application-server
framework upon which Plone is built. Again, when Plone is installed, Zope
comes with it.
Zope instance:
One Zope installation can support multiple instances, or runnable Zope servers.
Within each instance, you can have many Plone sites. We will let buildout create
and configure a Zope instance for us.
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This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Mauricio Esquenazi on 21st July 2009
10 Kenmare St. #4, , New York, , 10012