Install Plone 5 Beta 4 on Cloud9 IDE in 5 minutes

(update August 27, 2015:  The script now installs Plone 5 Beta 4)
These are quick instructions for installing Plone 5 Beta 4 on Cloud9 IDE, they supercede my post on installing Plone 5 Beta 2. This walks you through the process of installing Plone on Cloud9 IDE as it is no longer possible to do this on the free tiers of Codio. We assume you have already signed up with Cloud9 IDE.

Step 1 - Create a new Workspace

On the Cloud9 IDE dashboard select Create a new workspace

Use the default settings as a Starting Point

Then click Create workspace.

Step 2 - Enter the installer command in the terminal

in the terminal type the following:

wget -qO- goo.gl/5FMjBC | bash

You will see output similar to this:

Step 3 - Launching Plone 5

After successful installation (takes about 5 minutes) run the following command:

cd zinstance
bin/instance fg

Once it has started successfully you'll see the following message on the terminal:

INFO Zope Ready to handle requests

At that point select Preview > View Running Application.

IMPORTANT: You'll need to get the adminPassword, it is located under the 'zinstance' folder see the screenshot below.

Once it's running, click on the "pop out" button

This will lead you to the Plone installer (it will look a little weird, because of an issue with proxying the site via https). Click on Create a new Plone site and following the instructions.

Once you're successful you'll see a running Plone 5 site:

Things to Know

Here are a few things to know about Plone.

1. Plone runs on an application server called Zope 
2. You can actually run multiple copies of Plone on one Zope application server

Next Steps

This quick cloud based installation is a great way to try out some of the new things in Plone 5. Plone 5 is still being polished so it will have rough edges. Try changing the look of your site by following these notes from Asko Soukka on customizing Plone 5's default theme.

If you get this working, please leave a comment. If you try and have issues leave a comment.

5 minute Plone 4 install on Cloud9 IDE

Update (Feb 19, 2016): Plone 5 is the latest version and I've done a blog post on how to get Plone 5  running on Cloud 9 IDE.

This is an overview of getting Plone 4 (4.3.6 at the time of writing) up and running in 5 minutes or less on Cloud9 IDE. The aim of this is to make it easy, especially for students, to try out Plone, and more importantly Plone development for zero dollars. My previously recommended cloud based options (Nitrous and Codio) no longer offer a viable free tier.

Step 0 - Get a Cloud9 IDE account

You will need to get an account with Cloud9 IDE, so go and sign up over there and then come back here.

Step 1 - Start a new Custom Box

Not much to say here.  You can accept all the defaults to and then click "Create Workspace".

Step 2 - Run the Plone installer script

In the terminal paste the following command and press enter to begin the installation:

curl -L https://goo.gl/Enjwms | bash

You will see output similar to this:

Step 3 - Launch the server

Run the following commands to start Plone as a foreground process.

cd $HOME/workspace/zinstance
bin/instance fg

To stop plone use Ctrl + C.

Step 4 - Setup Plone

You will know that Plone is running when you see the following message in the terminal.

 "Zope Ready to handle requests" ([3] in the screenshot below). 

You can view the default administrator credentials, username and password under 'workspace' >  'zinstance' in a file called adminPassword.txt ([2] in the screenshot below). To go to your live server select 'Preview' > 'Preview Running Application'  ([1] in the screenshot below). 

You will see the Zope server ready to create your first Plone site.  Start by clicking the little icon to pop it out into a new window.

You can now create a new Plone site, you will be prompted for your Admin credentials (we discussed the adminpassword.txt above)

Zope server, ready to create a Plone Site

Click create Plone site and enter your credentials.

Important things of note

Cloud9 IDE provides a proxy that listens on port 8080, this is the default port for Plone if you change the port later on you will not be able to access the site using the Preview link.

This is for the purpose of development NOT PRODUCTION USE. For developing your new Plone based site you can work right here.

Plone 5 Beta 2 in the Cloud

Update: August 4, 2015 - Beta 3 is out, so go here to see how to install Plone 5 Beta 3.

These are quick instructions for installing Plone 5 Beta 2 on Codio.com.
I have found no faster (or more newbie friendly) way to get a Plone sandbox up and running.

I'll assume you have already signed up with Codio. If not, go ahead and do that first.

Step 1 - Create a new Project

On the Codio dashboard select Create Project

Use Default as the Starting Point and click Create.

Step 2 - Open the terminal

Select Tools > Terminal.

Then on the terminal enter the following command:

wget -qO- https://goo.gl/XxDEOO | bash

You will see output similar to this:

Step 3 - Launching Plone 5

After successful installation (takes about 6 minutes) you'll see that the menu in you project has updated.

Select Start Plone from the menu.

Get the admin password by selecting Admin Password from the menu, you'll be promoted for it later.

Select Plone site port 8080. This will show you the Plone installer

This will lead you to the Plone installer

Things to Know

Here are a few things to know about Plone.

1. Plone runs on an application server called Zope (this is why you'll see mention of Zope and ZEO as you work)
2. You can actually run multiple copies of Plone on one Zope application server

Next Steps

This quick cloud based installation is a great way to try out some of the new things in Plone 5. Plone 5 is still being polished so it will have rough edges. Try changing the look of your site by following these notes from Asko Soukka on customizing Plone 5's default theme.

If you get this working, please leave a comment. If you try and you're stuck

Install Plone in under 5 minutes on Codio.com

(update September 28, 2015)
Plone 5 was released today. Here are the instructions for installing the stable version of Plone 5.

(update: July 31, 2015)
I don't recommend this anymore. Instead try installing Plone on Cloud9 IDE.


I was introduced to Codio.com by +Rok Garbas. It turns out to be a very nice platform for developing Plone projects. So far what I like is that every Codio box pretty much ships with all the Plone dependencies while at the same time having a full suite of Node based tools (important for modern Javascript development), this is a great time saver on new projects.

These are still early days so I can't say much more about the platform but I do love that Codio.com offers unlimited projects. The system feels like a good cross between Nitrous.io and Cloud9 IDE.

Here's a script (based on my Plone Nitrous.io installer) that will get you up and running on Codio.com in less than 5 minutes.

Once you've opened an account at Codio.com do the following:

Step 1 - create a new blank project

Step 2 - Open the terminal and run the script

Open a terminal by going to "Tools" > "Terminal".

Then paste the following command into the terminal.

curl -L http://goo.gl/5gwGgo | bash

You will see output similar to this:

Step 3  - Customize your Codio Project

Next to the help menu you should see the "Configure" option, if you don't see it click the little arrow near the end and then select "Configure".

This opens a .codio file which you can customize. Replace the existing text with the text below:

{
// Configure your Run and Preview buttons here.
// Run button configuration
  "commands": {
       "Start Plone":"plone-start.sh",
       "Stop Plone":"plone-stop.sh",
       "Debug Plone":"plone-debug.sh",
      "Admin Password": "cat $HOME/workspace/zeocluster/adminPassword.txt"
  },
// Preview button configuration
  "preview": {
        "Dynamic Site": "http://{{domain}}:8080/",
        "Static Index (static)": "https://{{domain}}/{{index}}",
        "Current File (static)": "https://{{domain}}/{{filepath}}"
  }
}

Now you're all set, you can manage Plone from the Codio menu.

Start and Set up of Plone

You can start Plone using the Codio menu. You should now see options such as:

Start Plone, Stop Plone, Debug Plone and Admin Password. 

To setup your first site "Start Plone" and wait about 20 seconds, make a note of your "Admin Password" and then select the "Dynamic Site" menu entry and click "Create a new Plone site". 

You should be good from there.