Every CMS has a marketplace where you can find and install add-ons. Why doesn't Plone have a marketplace?
too complicated, little practical use, technically complicated, too much effort to implement and maintain for a niche CMS.
https://pag.derico.tech/ or GitHub - collective/awesome-plone: Add-ons and resources for the CMS Plone
1 Like
I guess, he is talking about something clickable inside Plone without manual interaction...
At least 10 years ago, there was a project to do something like this.
When I started with Plone, there was somewhere (maybe on the front page or another page) where 'new add-ons/updates' were published. I found it very useful.
What might be nice is if add-ons listed on github, included standard things (e.g. screenshots, video demo and overview). Then a uniformed listing of add-ons could be derived from that.
Because Plone it is a CMS developing framework with an app. It is true that now with pip install you can install the addon but, due to the nature of python, the application is not aware of it (need to add to the python path in the instance start script and need a restart).
I see the main problem in the instance start script, path are hard coded there and came from the process of picked up dependencies. Basically, you run a script to build the app, this script find all the egg dependencies and write the path of eggs in the script.
I think Django just use a config file for addons other than the core, but basically it is the same: pip install + write somewhere the addons is to be added to the path + restart
When Python is running, it is like a big program, while php is like a script that load what is needs at the time.
You need a python solution (and more featured and robust than plone.reload).
1 Like
ah... thanks for the explaination... i got the answer... thanks @yurj
Security. Once you allow installation of random software from the web through the web it is impossible to keep the site secure. You open an new attack vector, once it is possible to inject code through the web UI.
Having all this handling in code/filesystem-configuration and with the need of someone actively having access to the servers/build-process, pinned down to versions in file-system/GIT makes everything explicit, enables audits and makes it much safer.
1 Like
I understand your pov
Not saying it's a good idea but an example of something with python plugins that can be loaded at runtime is kodi. However it runs every plugin in it's own interpreter and in fact it unloads them most of the time until you click on something that needs that plugin. And this is one reason its pretty slow.
Just pointing out it has been done.
I hadn't thought of it before but potentially python 3.12 fast sub-interpreter support could make this less of an painful option. And there are now things like PythonMonkey that let you bring sandboxed js into python using WASM.
But yes, generally TTW installing plugins is something a serious CMS setup would avoid but I can see it making a CMS more attractive for beginners.
Both WordPress and Home Assistant have curated lists of installable plugins.
Home Assistant's HACS even installs all required Python eggs for you (it does require a restart of the HA process, but that's a few seconds downtime on a non-critical server of course).
Plone should have something like that too.
Failing that (or at least as a stepping stone in that direction) there should be a curated site (like the PAG site linked above) where folks can advertise their work and updates, just like WordPress.org. Heck, if development is centralized into Github, that site could likely be almost completely autogenerated for all we know (HACS does this).
The lack of such a site (never mind a direct installer inside the Plone add-ons page, which is a whole new different ask that requires eggs to be added to the container) places rather highly on the "reasons not to use Plone" motivations quite a few people give.
1 Like
GitHub - collective/awesome-plone: Add-ons and resources for the CMS Plone and GitHub - collective/awesome-volto: A curated list of everything that makes Volto awesome and the curated Lists for Plone.
https://pag.derico.tech is a uncurated list that gets all data from pypi and GitHub.
The community discussed installing addons ttw at least 10 years back and decided against it.
The low-hanging fruit is to link to the curated lists from demo.plone.org (Classic) and Add-ons (Volto) and fix the broken link to the docs behind "Installing a third party add-on" on Classic. These changes would be much appreciated.
2 Likes
Plone is a niche market with a limited number of users and a limited numbers of active maintainers. The glorious days of Plone are over - for various reasons. An app store would not be maintainable and would not solve anything regarding the Plone market share and Plone's (un)importance.
1 Like
Interesting POV...
But it may add an ease of use to the users in my opinion...
The majority of Plone sites is run and maintained by technically skilled people.
And there is not much left and right. There is no market and no usecase for most of us for such an app store. And as said: the Plone market is not large enough and it will not get larger.
3 Likes
Within its niche, Plone is glorious
- petschki
feel free to quote me 
4 Likes
Indeed 
I'd like to let others (outside the niche) adscribe (current or past) "gloriousness" to Plone.
BTW Here some definitions of "glorious":
- (formal) deserving or bringing great success and making somebody/something famous
- very beautiful and impressive
- (of weather) hot, with the sun shining
- extremely pleasant