Open Source, Open Partnership: Building NITheCS on Plone and Volto

Audience: Python developers curious about building with Plone/Volto, developers who work with nonprofits, research institutions and other clients with open-ended needs.

Abstract:

Plone is one of the oldest and most extensible content management systems built on Python, and Volto - its modern React-based frontend - has made it possible to build fast, highly customised sites without giving up Plone's content model and permissioning strengths underneath. This talk is in two parts.

Part 1: introduces Plone for people who haven't worked with it: what it is, how it sits in the Python ecosystem, and why its extensibility model (add-ons, custom Volto blocks, pluggable content types) makes it a strong fit for organisations whose needs will keep changing.

Part 2: uses a real project as a case study: the National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS) came to us wanting an open-source, Plone-based site, but without a fixed brief, just a direction and a willingness to figure out the rest together. We'll walk through the specific Volto extensions we built, how each one emerged from an actual working need rather than a spec sheet, and how the requirements and ideas evolved as the collaboration deepened.

Attendees will leave with a concrete sense of what Plone/Volto's extensibility model looks like in practice, and a transferable lesson for any developer working with a client or stakeholder who comes with a direction rather than a fixed brief, and is willing to figure out the rest with you: how to make the most of that openness, and what it takes on both sides to turn it into something better than either party could have planned alone.

Links:
What is Plone?: https://plone.org/why-plone/what-is-plone
Volto: https://plone.org/why-plone/plone-ecosystem/volto
NITheCS: https://nithecs.ac.za/