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Learn how Six Feet Up can help you Upgrade to Plone 4 and about our WebUnity multisite package for Plone.

Being both volunteers on the Plone Foundation and the largest Plone provider in the U.S., we get really excited when a new version of Plone is released to the public. Plone 4.3 does not disappoint, with great new features that make it easier for end users, marketing teams, and site administrators to modify their content and themes with less developer support. That's right, when we help you upgrade to Plone 4.3, you will save time and money while having even more flexibility with your site's content and look. Here are some critical features worth the upgrade to Plone 4.3:

Improved Syndication

Most teams like to reuse/syndicate their content to a variety of audiences. Plone 4.3 makes this a lot easier with new support for Atom and iTunes feeds. You can also directly manage your RSS settings from a control panel in Plone. Plone 4.3 also provides new hooks for easier feed output customization.

If you are looking for robust syndication and control within a network of sites, Six Feet Up has created some great technologies that enable the syndication and curation of content both across sub-sections of one Plone site or across multiple sites. This includes syndicating content across Plone and non-Plone sites since most large organizations will not consolidate to a single web platform. These are separate add-ons that connect to Plone and other open source CMS solutions.

In-Plone theme editor

With the new In-Plone theme editor, it is possible to completely build new Diazo themes from within the user interface as well as modify your existing theme. In some cases, this removes the need for back-end developer work to get your theme up and running or modify your theme. Of course, if you have more complex integrations and requirements, we can still do that for you. It also means that you may be able to do more theme updates on your own if you desire. You get more flexibility with your new themes in less time.

Updated to TinyMCE 3.4

TinyMCE is the editor window that every user relies on to input new info into your site, so any upgrade to it is critical and greatly welcomed. It's faster, more compatible, and allows you to do more. Here are just a few major improvements:

• Improved Internet Explorer support to avoid some IE annoyances
• Improved performance in all browsers
• Full WAI-ARIA compatibility for web accessibility compliance
• Additional HTML5 support and iframes support for embedding things like YouTube clips
• Added Dexterity compatibility

Dexterity content framework

The Dexterity content type framework is considered a major step forward in the evolution of Plone. Content types control how a site performs and what it displays when visitors interact with it. Dexterity makes it much more efficient to build content types, test them, and reuse them in sites. We are lucky to get this early as it was previously planned for Plone 5.

These four benefits in Plone 4.3 are great reasons to upgrade your site and be prepared for Plone 5 (which we expect to be released at the end of this year). There are also a few noteworthy changes for developers including decreased memory usage, the removal of Kupu, and KSS functionality has been migrated to jQuery.

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of upgrading to Plone 4.3 and the process, contact Carol Ganz at carol@sixfeetup.com or +1 (317) 861-5948 x610  for a free consultation.

Thanks to the contributors to Plone, we all have a better platform to manage our web presence.

About Six Feet Up, Inc.:

Founded in 1999, Six Feet Up is a woman-owned company that develops, hosts and supports open source sophisticated web projects, from enterprise content management and collaborative intranets to mobile apps. While the company has reached a leading position in the Plone market, Six Feet Up also leverages high-profile open source software, such as KARL, Pyramid, Django, and Sencha Touch. Six Feet Up's clients include top universities and life sciences organizations, growing and distributed teams, as well as Fortune 500 companies.