We work with organizations for whom it is paramount to protect sensitive corporate information, personally identifiable data, client data, HR plans, or other restricted details. Whether it is a project for the military, the health industry, the FinTech sector or for human right work, we understand how critical it is that the framework we recommend, implement and deploy be highly secure.

Plone CMS Logo

Plone is an advanced and secure Enterprise CMS. Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 350+ core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 70+ countries. It is a favored open source CMS for Higher Ed, enterprises, and the government for its flexibility, security, scalability, extendability and enterprise integration capabilities.

Plone 5 poster

Plone Overview

It is widely accepted that Plone has the strongest security functionality of any open source CMS available today. Plone is inherently more secure than any PHP-based CMS, which is well documented on numerous security-oriented web sites.

Plone was launched in 2003 and in just over a decade-long operating period has logged fewer than 50 security vulnerabilities. Competing platforms like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have each logged in excess of ten times that amount.

This high security standard has garnered the attention of many security conscious organizations and government agencies including NASA and the FBI, who picked Plone for their Enterprise Web CMS solution.

Six Feet Up is the largest Plone developer and host in the US

Six Feet Up has been a leader in Plone development and hosting since 2003. During this time, we have customized configurations and sets of products for specific uses within the Plone infrastructure. This has proven to greatly reduce the cost and time to implement common enterprise solutions for our clients.

We have had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects such as:
  • Plone theming
  • Custom content type creation
  • Custom publishing workflow
  • Sophisticated roles and permissions setup
  • Integration with Solr
  • LDAP and Active Directory integration
  • Legacy database integration
  • CRM integration (mostly Salesforce and SugarCRM)
  • Migration to Plone
  • Plone upgrade
  • Deployment with Load balancing and Caching
  • AWS Deployment
  • Plone Training and Mentoring
  • Plone Support
  • Etc.

We have built many custom Plone products. Some are available as open source solutions:

We are happy to help your build, extend, and maintain your Plone sites. We can also train and mentor your internal team.

Over the years, we have successfully delivered hundreds of Plone implementations in a number of industries, such as:
  • Health & Life Sciences
  • Education
  • Finance
  • Consulting
  • Publishing
  • Non-Profit
  • NGOs
  • High Tech
  • Transportation
  • Government
  • Military
  • Etc.

Plone FAQ

 

What is Plone?

Secure CMS PlonePlone is a powerful and flexible, enterprise-quality content management system. It is easy for developers to download and install, and easy for end-users to use. Plone lets non-technical people create and maintain website content using only a web browser. Plone offers a rich set of capabilities for public websites, private intranets and collaborative workspaces.

Plone has been actively developed since 2001, is available in more than 40 languages, and has the best security track record of any major CMS.

Plone’s codebase and intellectual property is owned by the Plone Foundation. The Plone Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in the US that serves to protect and promote Plone and its community. Donations to the Plone Foundation are tax-deductible in the US and help support the development and marketing of Plone worldwide.

How much does Plone cost?

Plone is open source software distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free to download, use, customize, and share.

With no licensing fees, Plone lets users spend their resources on:

  • Customizing software to meet specific site needs
  • Creating robust, compliant, and accessible content
  • Branding the look and feel of a site
  • Maintaining site infrastructure and data

Even after factoring in the cost of engaging consultants, the total cost of ownership for implementing a Plone solution will often be significantly less than propriety solutions such as SharePoint or Vignette, which carry steep licensing fees.

Organizations that do not have the in-house skills to deploy Plone will find that professional assistance and commercial support are available from over 300 Plone consulting firms located around the world. Six Feet Up is one of the leading Plone service providers in North America.

What databases does Plone integrate with?

Plone comes with a reliable, secure, easy-to-administer object database backend known as the ZODB (Zope Object Database). In addition, Plone can easily connect to data stored in Active Directory, LDAP, Salesforce.com, SQL databases, and more.

A free Plone add-on, RelStorage, also allows enterprises with investments in Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL to store the data driving their Plone site in their existing infrastructure. This allows for the use of familiar tools, clustering, and failover solutions.

Is Plone search engine friendly?

Very much so. Plone automatically encourages search engine optimization best practices such as keyword-rich URLs, human-readable descriptions, and crawlable sitemaps. For example, Plone.org runs on Plone and has a 94/100 Domain Authority.

There are also well maintained add-ons, that allow end users to override titles and descriptions, measure the use of keywords on a page, and set canonical URLs.

What do I need to host my Plone site?

Plone can run on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Solaris — and it offers a straightforward installation process to get a website up and running in no time.

For organizations who would rather have someone host their website or manage their servers, over 150 hosting providers are available to help. Six Feet Up is the leading Plone service provider in North America.

Who uses Plone?

Thousands of organizations including large and small businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, nonprofits, science organizations, media outlets and publishers are using Plone to power their websites.

A diverse range of organizations such as NASA, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Nokia, eBay, Novell, the FBI, the State Universities of Pennsylvania and Utah, as well as many governments around the world have chosen Plone to power both public-facing and internal websites.

Does Plone support versioning?

Plone ships with a product that allows users to track changes as successive versions of a document are written. Plone provides a detailed history of document versions and allows users to compare versions and even revert to a previous version.

Does Plone support multi-languages?

Plone has been translated into more than 40 languages.

Plone can manage content in multiple languages using LinguaPlone, a free add-on product. LinguaPlone provides content contributors with a convenient side by side interface to enter content in multiple languages without the need for a duplicate site structure.

There is also an internationalization team with members from Italy, France, Germany, Brazil and other countries that heavily use and test Plone in their languages.

Does Plone support visitors with disabilities?

Plone meets or exceeds U.S. Government Section 508, W3C WAI-AA, and WCAG 2.1 standards. Organizations with legal obligations to meet accessibility standards frequently choose Plone precisely for this reason.

How scalable is Plone?

Plone is appropriate for very small websites and very large ones. Plone has powerful built-in caching features that can be configured to optimize site performance. In addition, Plone site administrators often use web accelerators such as Squid and Varnish to boost site speed.

Thanks to its use of Zope, Plone has outstanding clustering capabilities, which allows a website to be split over multiple servers to handle high traffic.

How do I edit/upload my content using Plone?

Users can edit and upload content to their Plone site from any computer using only a web browser.

Users simply log into their site to edit existing pages, add new sections, remove old content, upload new videos, and do so using a simple web-based editor.

How does Plone compare with SharePoint, Drupal, Alfresco, and Joomla?

Plone is a true CMS with built-in publication workflow and document management features, unlike other systems such as SharePoint or Alfresco, which are primarily document management systems with limited web functionality. This makes Plone ideal for intranets and extranets.

Plone can be customized and extended to meet the specific needs of an organization in terms of site structure, content types, workflow rules, etc. Not all content management systems offer the same level of flexibility.

Plone is built on top of Python and Zope, giving it a very high level of security, which is why many people switch from Joomla and Drupal.

Plone is 100% open source, so released, stable versions can be downloaded for free. There’s no need to purchase a per-server or per-user license to get commercial support, as is the case with Alfresco or SharePoint.

Is Plone secure?

Plone offers superior security without sacrificing power or extensibility.

As an open source product, a large number of developers frequently scrutinize the code for any potential security issues. This proactive approach is better than the wait-and-see approach in proprietary software that relies on keeping security issues a secret instead of resolving them outright.

Built on Python and Zope, which are highly secure platforms, Plone has a technological edge that has helped it attain the best security track record of any major CMS (Source: CVE).

And because of its object-oriented backend, Plone isn’t vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks, which are one of the most common security problems that affect PHP/MySQL-based systems. Plone’s flexible ACL system for user permissions also helps ensures that users only see the content that they’re supposed to see.

In fact, security is a major reason why many CMS users switch to Plone.

Where can I find more information about Plone?

For more information, visit Plone's official website at: https://plone.com. To dive deep into the Plone community, visit the developer website at https://plone.org.

Learn More:

Demo Plone

Want to play with the latest version of Plone without spending time installing it? Try these live demo sites.

View Example Sites

You can browse our portfolio and see plenty of examples of past Plone implementations and deployments by the good people at Six Feet Up.

 

Do you have other questions about Plone? We're all ears!

 


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