Installing Plone 5 on Windows: Part 2 - Installing Plone

This is part 2 of installing Plone 5 on Windows. The following instructions are specific to installing Plone 5 on Windows. Part 1 covered preparing your Windows machine for Plone.

Assumptions

• Your system has been configured using the steps outlined in part 1 (see: prepare your Windows machine for Plone). 
• You have a reasonably reliable internet connection

You now have all the tools needed to build a full Plone environment. Plone uses a tool called "buildout" for managing builds, this makes it possible to distribute build configurations using git or other revision management tools. The folder where your build configuration exists is also referred to as a buildout. We will checkout an existing buildout called "themedev.buildout". The intention of the "themedev.buildout" is to provide all the tools needed for Plone theme development.

In the steps below you will clone the buildout then run an initializaton script called "setup.bat"

Step 1 - Install Virtualenv

Launch git bash and run the following to install virtualenv.

pip install virtualenv

Step 2 - Clone the buildout, run the setup script and bin/buildout

git clone https://github.com/collective/themedev.buildout
cd themedev.buildout
./setup.bat
bin/buildout

Day to Day Usage

To launch the instance run the following:

bin/instance fg

Installing Plone 5 on Windows: Part 1 - Preparing the machine

Windows does not ship with all the tools needed to install Plone for development. These are the steps needed to prepare your Windows machine for Plone 5.

Assumptions

I assume that you're using a Windows machine on which you have enough permissions to run commands as an administrator. That's it!

What you will need to install

I recommend that you install the following to run Plone:

• Git for Windows
• Python 2.7
• Visual C++ for Python 2.7
• Pywin32
• NodeJS

If you don't have a preferred text editor gedit is a simple editor for beginners.

The Steps

Step 1 - Download and install Git for Windows

IMPORTANT, Install Git for Windows First, it adds some context tools to Windows which you will use later.

Download and install git for windows from https://git-for-windows.github.io.

Step 2 - Download and install Python 2.7 from https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/

The latest version at the time of writing was Python 2.7.12. Basically it's a matter of clicking "next, next, next" EXCEPT on the "Customize" dialog. Look for "Add python.exe to Path" and make sure it is enabled (it is disabled by default).

Apart from one adjustment it is basically "next, next, next" to install

.                                                                                                                                                             .

Step 3 - Download and install Visual C++ for Python 2.7 

Download from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44266

Make sure it is downloaded to your "Downloads" folder.

Right click on your Downloads folder and from the context menu select Git Bash Here.

In the resulting console type the following and hit the enter key:

msiexec /i VCForPython27.msi ALLUSERS=1

This launches the Windows installer with administrator privileges. Click "Ok" to proceed.

Step 4 - Install Pywin32

Download it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/pywin32/

Make sure you download the latest build (220 at the time of writting) and the one for Python 2.7.

Step 5 - Install NodeJS

Download NodeJS from https://nodejs.org/en/download/ and make sure to select the recommended version LTS.

Step 6 - Install Gedit (optional)

You can skip this step if you already have a text editor, otherwise download and install gedit https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit#Download

Why this approach?

• Visual C++ for Python 2.7 results in faster modules which means that Plone will run faster than if you had used an equivalent compiler like GCC+.
• It is more common in the Windows world to point and click rather than run commands on the command line, I tried my best to minimize interactions with the command line. The approach should feel more natural for Windows users, especially more casual users.