Summary Plone is one of the first CMS projects to be built using Python and it is still being actively developed. This week Eric Steele, the release manager for Plone, tells us about how it got started, how it is architected, and how the community is one of its greatest strengths Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. When you’re ready to launch your next project you’ll need somewhere to deploy it. Check out Linode at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for running your awesome app. You’ll want to make sure that your users don’t have to put up with bugs, so you should use Rollbar for tracking and aggregating your application errors to find and fix the bugs in your application before your users notice they exist. Use the link rollbar.com/podcastinit to get 90 days and 300,000 errors for free on their bootstrap plan. Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch. To help other people find the show you can leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, and tell your friends and co-workers Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com for your opportunity to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas. Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Eric Steele about the Plone CMS. Interview with Eric Steele Introductions How did you get introduced to Python? Can you start by explaining a bit about what Plone is and how you got involved with it? How did the Plone project get started and how has it evolved over the years? What makes Plone unique among the myriad CMS tools that are available and which of them do you consider to be direct competitors? Plone has managed to keep an impressive track record of security. What are some of the key features that enable that? I know that for much of its history, the default data storage for plone was the ZODB (Zope Object DataBase). How would you describe its benefits and drawbacks for someone who is familiar with a relational database? Plone is one of the most long-lived Python projects that I am aware of. What are some of the most difficult maintenance challenges that you have encountered over the years of its existence? What does the internal architecture of Plone look like? One of the major tenets of the project is the ability to install extensions. What are some of the most interesting plugins that you are aware of? What kinds of projects are Plone best suited for? What does the workflow look like for a user of Plone? What are some of the most interesting uses of Plone that you have seen? What are the biggest challenges facing the Plone project and community as development and deployment paradigms continue to change? Keep In Touch Plone Website Forum IRC: #plone on freenode.net Eric Twitter E-mail Picks Tobias The Inquiry (podcast) PyCon US Eric Really Bad Chess Home Assistant Links Zope ZEO PloneFormGen Rapido CastleCMS Plumi Bika LIMS Quaive (Plone Intranet) Open Advice The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA .