Plone to the cloud in 3 easy steps

update: July 31, 2015 My recommended approach is to install Plone on Cloud9 IDE.

update: July 24, 2013 This no longer works as Dotcloud has retired their free sandboxes. I've documented a way to run Plone in the Cloud with Nitrous.io.

Before you start

You will need:

• 5 to 10 minutes of spare time.

• a  reliable internet connection 
• a Cloud9 IDE account 
• a Dotcloud account 

Have your login information for both Cloud9 IDE and Dotcloud close at hand.

Disclaimer:

The underlying tools for managing Plone on Dotcloud from Cloud9 IDE are in an alpha stage at best (meaning, I've been working on this for only a few weeks)

Setup and Installation

Step 1 - Clone the URL at Cloud9 IDE

Log in to Cloud9 IDE and from the dashboard select "Create new workspace" > "Clone from URL".

In the resulting dialog box, set the "source URL" to https://github.com/pigeonflight/stack-python-plone and click "Create":

Step 2 - Preparation

Launch your newly created Cloud9 IDE instance from the dashboard and install the dependencies by issuing the following commands from a dotcloud terminal (you can launch the terminal with the shortcut key Alt+T)

easy_install pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

Also setup dotcloud (you'll be prompted for you dotcloud username and password)

dotcloud setup

Step 3 - Create a dotcloud instance

From a terminal create a new dotcloud instance and push. (Answer yes when asked about using the current directory for using

dotcloud create plonedemo
dotcloud push

This will generate a live Plone instance on dotcloud.

Accessing your Plone Site

Your Plone site is named based on your dotcloud account name and your dotcloud instance name. If you used the name 'plonedemo' and your dotcloud account name is 'scotty', then your Plone url will be: http://plonedemo-scotty.dotcloud.com.

Your credentials (admin password)

The following command will retrieve your admin password:

dotcloud run www cat code/adminPassword.txt

Make a note of your admin password.

Visit the appropriate url using your webbrowser and log in using the credentials from the output of the above command.

Have fun.