Install Plone from its packages#

When you want full control over development or deployment, installing Plone from its packages is a good option.

System requirements#

Plone 6 has both hardware requirements and software pre-requisites.

Hardware requirements#

The hardware requirements below give a rough estimate of the minimum hardware setup needed for a Plone server.

Add-on products and caching solutions may increase RAM requirements.

A single Plone installation is able to run many Plone sites. You may host multiple Plone sites on the same server.

Minimum 256 MB RAM and 512 MB of swap space per Plone site is required. 2 GB or more RAM per Plone site is recommended.
Minimum 512 MB hard disk space is required. 40 GB or more hard disk space is recommended.

Pre-requisites for installation#

An operating system that runs all the pre-requisites. Most UNIX-based operating systems are supported, including many Linux distributions, macOS, or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows. A UNIX-based operating system is recommended.

Important

Windows alone is not recommended because it does not support GNU make. If you get Plone to run on Windows alone, please feel free to document and share your process.
Python 3.8, 3.9, or 3.10.
Cookiecutter
nvm
Node.js LTS 16.x (see "Update" note)
Yeoman
Yarn
GNU make
Docker

Note

Update: Node.js 18 is in LTS state as of 2022-10-25, and Node.js 16 is now in maintenance mode. However, due to changes in internal SSL libraries, some Volto dependencies have been deprecated and need to be updated in order to continue working in Node.js 18, mainly Webpack 4. You can still use it, but Node.js should be run under a special flag: NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider.

See also

Volto's pull request, Support Node 18.

Python#

Installing Python is beyond the scope of this documentation. However, it is recommended to use a Python version manager, pyenv that allows you to install multiple versions of Python on your development environment without destroying your system's Python.

Cookiecutter#

Install or upgrade Cookiecutter in your user's Python:

pip install --user --upgrade cookiecutter

nvm#

The following terminal session commands use bash for the shell. Adapt them for your flavor of shell.

Node.js#

Install or update the supported LTS version of Node.js. This command also activates that version.
```
nvm install 16
```
Verify that the supported version of Node.js is activated.
```
node -v
```

Yeoman#

Install Yeoman.

npm install -g yo

Yarn 3#

Install the latest Yarn 3 version (not the Classic 1.x one) using npm.

Open a terminal and type:
```
npm install yarn@3
```
Verify that Yarn v3.x.x is installed and activated.
```
yarn -v
```
```
3.2.3
```

Make#

Make comes installed on most Linux distributions. On macOS, you must first install Xcode, then install its command line tools. On Windows, it is strongly recommended to Install Linux on Windows with WSL, which will include make.

Finally, it is a good idea to update your system's version of make, because some distributions, especially macOS, have an outdated version. Use your favorite search engine or trusted online resource for how to update make.

Install Docker#

Install Docker Desktop for your operating system.

Docker Desktop includes all Docker tools.

Install Plone 6#

We install Plone 6 with pip, Cookiecutter, mxdev, make, and other developer tools.

Note

We do not maintain documentation for installing Plone 6 or later with buildout. For Plone 5, buildout was the preferred installation method. You can read the documentation of how to install Plone 5 with buildout, and adapt it to your needs for Plone 6.

Create a new directory to hold your project, and make it your current directory.

mkdir my_project
cd my_project

Run cookiecutter to create a Plone project skeleton using the Cookiecutter cookiecutter-plone-starter with the following command.

cookiecutter https://github.com/collective/cookiecutter-plone-starter

You will be presented with a series of prompts. You can accept the default values in square brackets ([default-option]) by hitting the Enter key, or enter your preferred values. For ease of documentation, we will use the default values.

You've downloaded <path-to-cookiecutter>/cookiecutter-plone-starter before. Is it okay to delete and re-download it? [yes]: 
project_title [Project Title]: 
project_slug [project-title]: 
description [A new project using Plone 6.]: 
author [Plone Foundation]: 
email [collective@plone.org]: 
python_package_name [project_title]: 
plone_version [6.0.0]: 
volto_version [16.5.0]: 
volto_generator_version [6.2.0]: 
Select language_code:
1 - en
2 - de
3 - es
4 - pt-br
Choose from 1, 2, 3, 4 [1]: 
github_organization [collective]: 
Select container_registry:
1 - Docker Hub
2 - GitHub
Choose from 1, 2 [1]: 
================================================================================
Project Title generation
================================================================================
Running sanity checks
  - Python: ✓
  - Node: ✓
  - yo: ✓
  - Docker: ✓
  - git: ✓

Summary:
  - Plone version: 6.0.0
  - Volto version: 16.5.0
  - Volto Generator version: 6.2.0
  - Output folder: <path-to-project>/project-title

Frontend codebase:
 - Installing @plone/generator-volto@6.2.0
 - Generate frontend application with @plone/volto 16.5.0

Backend codebase
 - Format generated code in the backend
================================================================================

Project "Project Title" was generated

Now, code it, create a git repository, push to your organization.

Sorry for the convenience,
The Plone Community.

================================================================================

Change to your project directory project-title.

cd project-title

Next we switch to using make. To see all available commands and their descriptions, enter the following command.

make help

To install both the Plone backend and frontend, use the following command.

make install

This will take a few minutes. ☕️ First the backend, then the frontend will be installed. At the start of the frontend installation part, you might see a prompt.

Need to install the following packages:
  mrs-developer
Ok to proceed? (y)

Hit the Enter key to proceed and install mrs-developer.

When the process completes successfully, it will exit with a message similar to the following.

✨  Done in 98.97s.

Start Plone#

Plone 6 has two servers: one for the frontend, and one for the backend. As such, we need to maintain two active shell sessions, one for each server, to start your Plone site.

Start Plone backend#

In the currently open session, issue the following command.

make start-backend

The Plone backend server starts up and emits messages to the console.

2022-09-24 01:30:17,799 WARNING [ZODB.FileStorage:411][MainThread] Ignoring index for /<path-to-project>/my_project/project-title/backend/instance/var/filestorage/Data.fs
2022-09-24 01:30:19,639 INFO    [chameleon.config:38][MainThread] directory cache: /<path-to-project>/my_project/project-title/backend/instance/var/cache.
2022-09-24 01:30:23,680 INFO    [plone.volto:22][MainThread] Aliasing collective.folderish classes to plone.volto classes.
2022-09-24 01:30:24,935 INFO    [Zope:42][MainThread] Ready to handle requests
Starting server in PID 92714.
2022-09-24 01:30:24,940 INFO    [waitress:486][MainThread] Serving on http://[::1]:8080
2022-09-24 01:30:24,940 INFO    [waitress:486][MainThread] Serving on http://127.0.0.1:8080

Start Plone frontend#

Create a second shell session in a new window. Change your current working directory to project-title. Start the Plone frontend with the following command.

make start-frontend

The Plone frontend server starts up and emits messages to the console.

 WAIT  Compiling...


✔ Client
  Compiled successfully in 864.83ms

✔ Server
  Compiled successfully in 9.62s

✅  Server-side HMR Enabled!
sswp> Handling Hot Module Reloading
Volto is running in SEAMLESS mode
Using internal proxy: http://localhost:3000 -> http://localhost:8080/Plone
🎭 Volto started at 0.0.0.0:3000 🚀

Note that the Plone frontend uses an internal proxy server to connect with the Plone backend. Open a browser at the following URL to visit your Plone site.

http://localhost:3000

You will see a page similar to the following.

Select the Login link to visit the login form, and enter the following credentials.

Login name: admin
Password: admin

Now you can edit content or configure your Plone site.

You can stop the site with ctrl-c.

Enjoy!

Plone Documentation v6.0

Install Plone from its packages

Contents