Learning Basic Plone

You can learn some basic Plone by spending a few minutes installing Plone and learning how to create content, move around the site, and perform simple content management (deleting and moving content around).

For many people, this is an easy self-learning exercise. However, if you'd prefer to follow along with a book, an excellent resource for this is Content Management with Plone.

Learning/Improving HTML & CSS

Our favorite book, by far is O'Reilly's Head First HTML. This covers HTML, CSS, and even a bit of basic JavaScript. It's particularly excellent book, and is geared for people learning, rather than as a reference for people who already know the material.

Note that, while this book begins at the beginning--it's suitable for people just getting started--it ends up, in the later chapters, covering some intermediate and even advanced HTML issues. So, don't panic when you see the size of the book (about 600 pages), or worry that you haven't read the whole thing. You'll be happy that intermediate stuff is there as you want to learn more!

For those who feel very comfortable with HTML, but want a gentle, online introduction to CSS, check out CSS Basics.

Learning Basic Python

One of the nicest things about Python is that it's easy to learn just a little bit of the language--and for many Plone users and customizers, that's all you'll need to know. You can come to most of our classes without any Python knowledge, but spending 2 or 3 hours skimming the first chapters of a Python book or resource will be very helpful.

An excellent book on learning Python is O'Reilly's Learning Python. This is geared toward people who have some experience with another programming language. An alternative is the free on-line book Dive Into Python.

A good collection of resources on learning Python for complete beginners is at Python.Org's Learning Python.