Informatics Web CMS

We now run a general purpose Web Content Management System (WCMS) base on Zope/Plone. The service is pretty much a default Zope/Plone installation, hence Plone.org's online documentation covers most of the details (we are running Plone 3.0). Currently we don't have any home grown quick start guides, but a few points to note are:

• Only Informatics Staff and research staff/students can request a new site, though anyone will then be able to use that site, depending on the access decided upon by the site manager (usually the person who requested the site).
• Request a new site via the support form. Please include details about:
  • Who will be the site administrator.
  • A name and description of the site.
  • How long you expect it to be active for.
• The URL for the site will default to wcms.inf.ed.ac.uk/<site_name>/ and can be setup quickly (providing it doesn't clash with an existing site). However, if necessary we can alias or proxy that to almost any other URL, though this requires more effort and can also depends on factors out with our control.
• Authentication is via the Informatics Cosign service (weblogin.inf.ed.ac.uk), which means potentially anyone in the world could have access to your site unless suitable access restrictions have been applied. When applying for a site, say who your intended audience/collaborators are, and we can advise on how best to achieve this.
• Users do not have file level access to the server.
• There are a few rough edges to the Cosign/Plone authentication, but we will look at this when we have the time.
• We can't offer much advice on "skinning", but we can and will install add on Products if they are stable and potentially useful to other users of the site. Again, request these via the support form.
• Basic use of Plone can be found at /systems/web/plone-user.html.