Decision Education Foundation

Upgrading to Plone 3

By upgrading to Plone 3, Decision Education Foundation's ability to maintain their own content has become substantially easier. Plone 3 has many features that ease the maintenance of the site, including:

• Link and reference integrity checks ensure the administrator is aware of any content that needs to be changed when there are links to an item that is deleted;
• Automatic page locking and unlocking ensures content being edited is not accidentally overwritten by another user;
• Workflow capabilities allow site members to act on content based on their particular role in the site as well as the status of the content (private or published);
  
• Easy reproducibility enables users to test add-on products and new code without jeopardizing the production site through the use of buildout.

A full list of new features and upgrades in Plone 3.0 can be found here.

Leveraging Existing Add-Ons

To improve visitors' view of the Decision Education Foundation's site and ease of use by the site administrators, Six Feet Up leveraged multiple tools that were previously available to the open source market:

• EasySlideshow (a.k.a. collective.easyslideshow), a product originally created by Six Feet Up, was further customized to give visitors a view into the world of the Decision Education Foundation through images and quotations;
• Plone4Artists Video (a.k.a. p4a.video) was modified to allow video not only on the homepage but as a downloadable resource as well;
• Plone Help Center was leveraged to give site administrators one place to go for help in maintaining the site.

Custom Development

Decision Education Foundation now has the ability to give educators what they want - more content, tailored to their needs - through the creation of custom content types:

• Electronic materials such as booklets, videos, lesson plans and courses can be downloaded directly from the site via the custom Resource content type;
• Third-party services allow visitors to purchase non-digital items, such as mousepads, bracelets, and hats;
• Resources are automatically syndicated on the Educator Resources landing page and the category folders within, allowing them to be easily found by visitors yet easily maintained by site administrators;
• Tracking demographic data when a resource is downloaded or purchased allows Decision Education Foundation to best serve their visitors by providing them with more relevant content.