8 Reasons to Upgrade to Plone 5
Plone 5 was officially released in 2016, and Plone 5.1 is now out and ready for production use. Here are 8 great reasons why you’ll want to upgrade to Plone 5:
1. Hardened Security
The Plone Content Management System (CMS) already offers an unsurpassed security track record. Yet Plone 5 raises the bar even higher and comes with automatic CSRF protection, which, in previous versions of Plone has to be manually added. This protects your site from cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. So, keep your site secure by making sure you are on the latest version of Plone and staying up-to-date!
2. More Power to Non-Programmers
Content types can now be managed through-the-web (TTW), finally giving non-developers control over their content and how it displays. This is a huge simplification over previous versions of Plone where you had to edit types via code, or even use schema extender to add fields when working with archetypes.
3. Smooth Editing Experience
Plone 5 saw some major improvements to the editing interface over Plone 4. The green edit bar at the top of the content well is no longer. Now all the editing functions are accessible via a vertical bar conveniently placed along the left side of the screen, hence leaving you with a clean and unencumbered editing area. Similarly, the forms used for editing content now sport a much more modern look and feel. People used to the WordPress admin interface will feel right at home!
The new Plone 5 toolbar:
Adding content in Plone 5:
4. Faster Page Load
Plone 5 has gotten some major improvements in the templating and loading of resources, which means your Plone 5 site will appear quite snappy to the end users.
5. Editable User Properties
Similar to the content type updates, non-developers can now add fields (e.g. URL, biography, portrait) to user profiles through-the-web.
6. Image Cropping Made Easy
A common issue content contributors complain about is that images used on news detailed pages and listing views are rarely displayed at the same size or even dimensions. The plone.app.imagecropping add-on allows you to hand pick what part of the photo the crop will display for each available image size.
7. HiDPI Images and Auto-Rotation
With Plone 5.1, you can choose to display images at 2x or 3x resolution, which is great for people with high-resolution (think Retina) monitors. Images will also automatically rotate to the correct orientation.
8. New Form Generation Tool
Finally, the collective.easyform form generator is the replacement to PloneFormGen (PFG). PFG does work in Plone 5, but is dependent on older add-ons, and is not likely to be supported much longer. The easyform product is a nice, comparable replacement that uses the modern technology Dexterity available in Plone 5.
How To Get Started?
Thinking about upgrading? Here are Tips for a successful Plone 5 upgrade, as well as information about Transmogrifier for running your content migration.
Additional Resources:
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