[Evangelism] virtual appliances for Plone evaluation

[T. Kim Nguyen]

Guy Heckman and I are putting together a VMWare appliance and a VirtualBox appliance for Plone 4.0.5.

We thought it would be a good way to ease people into trying out Plone. If you look at vmware.com/appliances there are many out there for other CMSs, but none for Plone. Same at other virtual appliance sites below. This idea stemmed from our PloneEdu buildout project (first a buildout, then a custom unified installer, and then an appliance)...

Is this something that should be part of the Plone marketing effort? Below is the rest of a message I sent out to the plone-website team yesterday - sorry for the duplicate-ish message but this idea probably falls in a couple of places (plone.org site, documentation, marketing). Has this been considered before? Other questions/thoughts below.

Kim


There are a couple of places we can (eventually) get them hosted:

http://vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/502

and

http://virtualboximages.com/

and possibly

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/

Or we could use BitTorrent to distribute them from someplace else.

Is there interest in pointing to these appliances from plone.org? Perhaps making a plone.org/appliances or plone.org/eval section? The point of these appliances is to make it easy for someone to evaluate Plone. There are a lot of appliances out there for other CMSs. We could make them for a mix of OSs as well as for things like the PloneEdu buildout. Do we want to set some ground rules on what kinds of documentation goes with these, or what they can contain, and should we organize now who will maintain these as OS and Plone versions come out?

[Philip Bauer]

Do you know about the plone live-cd?
http://www.plone.de/ueber-plone/download/plone-live-cd

It uses http://plone.org/products/collective.isoplatform

Regards,
Philip

Post by T. Kim Nguyen
Guy Heckman and I are putting together a VMWare appliance and a VirtualBox appliance for Plone 4.0.5.
We thought it would be a good way to ease people into trying out Plone. If you look at vmware.com/appliances there are many out there for other CMSs, but none for Plone. Same at other virtual appliance sites below. This idea stemmed from our PloneEdu buildout project (first a buildout, then a custom unified installer, and then an appliance)...
Is this something that should be part of the Plone marketing effort? Below is the rest of a message I sent out to the plone-website team yesterday - sorry for the duplicate-ish message but this idea probably falls in a couple of places (plone.org site, documentation, marketing). Has this been considered before? Other questions/thoughts below.
Kim
http://vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/502
and
http://virtualboximages.com/
and possibly
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
Or we could use BitTorrent to distribute them from someplace else.
Is there interest in pointing to these appliances from plone.org? Perhaps making a plone.org/appliances or plone.org/eval section? The point of these appliances is to make it easy for someone to evaluate Plone. There are a lot of appliances out there for other CMSs. We could make them for a mix of OSs as well as for things like the PloneEdu buildout. Do we want to set some ground rules on what kinds of documentation goes with these, or what they can contain, and should we organize now who will maintain these as OS and Plone versions come out?
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https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

[T. Kim Nguyen]

Thanks for the context, Ken (hmm, that would be a good name for a company... ;) )

Philip, I did not know about the live CD. That too should probably be pointed to from plone.org. How frequently is it maintained? Looks like Plone 4.0 is up there but is that with the hotfix?

That's one of the concerns I have about embarking on this route... we will have to be organized to ensure that our appliances and live CDs are up to date with new Plone and operating system versions.

As Ken says, the download section or perhaps a separate "eval" section that includes links to the downloads, the appliances, the live CD, and associated first-timer/evaluation tutorial(s).

I'm willing to start putting something together: a mock up or a separate page somewhere (PloneEdu would be willing to set it up on its site initially).

Kim

Post by Philip Bauer
Do you know about the plone live-cd?
http://www.plone.de/ueber-plone/download/plone-live-cd
It uses http://plone.org/products/collective.isoplatform
Regards,
Philip

Post by T. Kim Nguyen
Guy Heckman and I are putting together a VMWare appliance and a VirtualBox appliance for Plone 4.0.5.
We thought it would be a good way to ease people into trying out Plone. If you look at vmware.com/appliances there are many out there for other CMSs, but none for Plone. Same at other virtual appliance sites below. This idea stemmed from our PloneEdu buildout project (first a buildout, then a custom unified installer, and then an appliance)...
Is this something that should be part of the Plone marketing effort? Below is the rest of a message I sent out to the plone-website team yesterday - sorry for the duplicate-ish message but this idea probably falls in a couple of places (plone.org site, documentation, marketing). Has this been considered before? Other questions/thoughts below.
Kim
http://vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/502
and
http://virtualboximages.com/
and possibly
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
Or we could use BitTorrent to distribute them from someplace else.
Is there interest in pointing to these appliances from plone.org? Perhaps making a plone.org/appliances or plone.org/eval section? The point of these appliances is to make it easy for someone to evaluate Plone. There are a lot of appliances out there for other CMSs. We could make them for a mix of OSs as well as for things like the PloneEdu buildout. Do we want to set some ground rules on what kinds of documentation goes with these, or what they can contain, and should we organize now who will maintain these as OS and Plone versions come out?
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Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

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Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
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[Ken Wasetis [Contextual Corp.]]

Kim,

This has been talked about numerous times - in fact, a year and two
weeks ago, at 2010 CMS Expo, we had Calvin, Nate, Alan, Alexander, and a
couple others all saying the same. One of the things about that
conference is that it smacks you in the face how much better Plone is
than Joomla, for instance, but how much they've kicked our butt in the
area of mind share due to the availability of single-click options via
cPanel and Plesk setups with the ubiquitous $10/mo hosting providers.
And with the topic of getting Plone added to such installers offered
from the likes of GoDaddy, etc. came the idea of - hey, we should really
have virtual appliances with an Edu stack, an NGO stack, an Intranet
stack of add-ons already in place.

This is a repeated topic - I even remember a BoF at the Seattle
conference about doing vertical stack distros, but nothing has come to
fruition, and now it's so much simpler with the release of an
edu-buildout.cfg, for example.

If you guys get something rolled out, we all need to coordinate with
Mark Corum (Marketing) and the Plone.org web site team on how to make it
extremely easy to get at this information - perhaps from the Plone
installers download page? Just spit-balling - we'll all have our own
ideas (this is a good place to put them), but again, it needs to be
coordinated and the information needs to be easily found, so that you
guys aren't wasting your time - so that someone can actually find your
VMs images easily and get using them.

I really hope this is the start of finally executing on something that's
been talked about for a long, long time. Go get 'em, Guy/Kim!

Mark - if you're listening/reading, any comments on next steps for
these guys?

Ken

Post by T. Kim Nguyen
Guy Heckman and I are putting together a VMWare appliance and a VirtualBox appliance for Plone 4.0.5.
We thought it would be a good way to ease people into trying out Plone. If you look at vmware.com/appliances there are many out there for other CMSs, but none for Plone. Same at other virtual appliance sites below. This idea stemmed from our PloneEdu buildout project (first a buildout, then a custom unified installer, and then an appliance)...
Is this something that should be part of the Plone marketing effort? Below is the rest of a message I sent out to the plone-website team yesterday - sorry for the duplicate-ish message but this idea probably falls in a couple of places (plone.org site, documentation, marketing). Has this been considered before? Other questions/thoughts below.
Kim
http://vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/502
and
http://virtualboximages.com/
and possibly
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
Or we could use BitTorrent to distribute them from someplace else.
Is there interest in pointing to these appliances from plone.org? Perhaps making a plone.org/appliances or plone.org/eval section? The point of these appliances is to make it easy for someone to evaluate Plone. There are a lot of appliances out there for other CMSs. We could make them for a mix of OSs as well as for things like the PloneEdu buildout. Do we want to set some ground rules on what kinds of documentation goes with these, or what they can contain, and should we organize now who will maintain these as OS and Plone versions come out?
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Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

[Chris Calloway]

Post by Ken Wasetis [Contextual Corp.]
I really hope this is the start of finally executing on something that's
been talked about for a long, long time. Go get 'em, Guy/Kim!

Like I suspect a lot of people on this list, I have my own VMWare and
EC2 Plone images which I have not published due to support issues. This
effort will take some dedication from a couple of folks to maintain.