Plone Distributions

Package supporting the (easy) implementation of a Plone distribution.

What is a Plone distribution

A Plone distribution is a pre-packaged version of Plone that includes specific features, themes, modules, and configurations. It is a convenient way to get a specific type of website up and running quickly, as the distribution includes everything needed to run that type of site.

Examples of Plone distributions include:

• SENAITE
• Quaive
• Portal Modelo
• Portal Padrão

Similar concepts in other CMSs

• Drupal: Drupal has distributions for blogs, e-commerce sites, and intranet portals.

• WordPress: WordPress has a similar concept in the form of "WordPress Multisite," which allows users to run multiple websites from a single installation of WordPress.

• Joomla: Joomla has a similar concept in the form of "Joomla Templates," which are pre-designed templates for Joomla websites.

• TYPO3: TYPO3 has a similar concept in the form of "TYPO3 Distributions," which are pre-configured installations of TYPO3 for specific types of websites.

plone.distribution versions

Create a new distribution

See the official documentation at Create a Plone distribution.

This project is supported by

License

The project is licensed under the GPLv2.

Changelog

4.0.0 (2026-05-16)

Internal:

• Make final release, no further changes.

4.0.0a2 (2025-12-29)

Bug fixes:

• Remove deprecated plone.volto:default-homepage profile from README.md recommendations. @Thanush-03 #99

Documentation:

• Fix Sphinx build. @stevepiercy #133
• Remove duplicate documentation from README.md and link to authoritative source. @stevepiercy #136

4.0.0a1 (2025-11-26)

Breaking changes:

• Replace pkg_resources namespace with PEP 420 native namespace. Support only Plone 6.2 and Python 3.10+. #3928

3.2.1 (2025-09-05)

Bug fixes:

• Fix frontend resource paths to work properly with VHM. @wesleybl #98

3.2.0 (2025-06-18)

New features:

• Support specifying a base GenericSetup profile during distribution registration. @ericof #116

Bug fixes:

• Set the site hook when accessing the migration tool for a site. @ericof #117
• Fix POSKeyError in tests by adding a transaction.savepoint after importing default content with plone.exportimport. @ericof #119

Internal:

• Add configuration for ruff as code formatter. @ericof
• Update .vscode settings. @ericof
• Update config files using plone.meta @ericof

3.1.2 (2025-04-05)

New features:

• Add attribute package to plone.distribution.core.Distribution to store which package registered a specific distribution. @ericof #114

3.1.1 (2025-03-11)

Bug fixes:

• frontend: relative backend requests @lyralemos #98
• Replace pkg_resources with importlib.metadata @gforcada #4126

3.1.0 (2025-02-06)

New features:

• frontend: show id of Plone instance. @ksuess #109

3.0.0 (2025-01-29)

New features:

• Include revisions only when passing --include-revisions. @mauritsvanrees #39

Bug fixes:

• Fix warning for unclosed file at startup. #4090

3.0.0b2 (2024-12-19)

Bug fixes:

• Fix logic for suggested id for new site. It could suggest an id that was already taken. @mauritsvanrees #97

Tests

• Fix test that failed because an extra distribution was found. @mauritsvanrees #104

3.0.0b1 (2024-11-25)

Bug fixes:

• Fix bug where launch screen was blank in Chrome. @davisagli #101

3.0.0a1 (2024-10-31)

Breaking changes:

• Move internal classic distribution to plone.classicui [@mauritsvanrees][@ericof] #79

New features:

• Move internal default distribution to plone.volto [@mauritsvanrees][@ericof] #80

Internal:

• Clarify RestTraverser code. [maurits]

2.0.0b1 (2024-05-17)

New features:

• Redesign the site creation page [@danalvrz] #63

2.0.0a1 (2024-05-16)

Breaking changes:

• plone.distribution is now based on plone.exportimport instead of collective.exportimport.

  There are some backwards-incompatible changes in the export format. To convert an existing distribution to the new format, use the following steps:

  1. Create a site from the distribution using plone.distribution 1.0.x
  2. Install plone.distribution 2.0.x
  3. Delete the distribution's contents/items folder.
  4. Export the distribution in the new format using the bin/export-distribution script.

  @davisagli, @ericof #61

New features:

• Default distribution: Allow users to upload a logo during site creation [@ericof] #66
• Classic distribution: Allow users to upload a logo during site creation [@ericof] #67
• Remove dependency on Plone package, add dependency on Products.CMFPlone [@ericof] #70

Bug fixes:

• Get the name of the existing distribution from the report, not the answers [@ericof] #60
• Fix issue with payload for new site creation breaking with certain plone.rest versions [@ericof] #71
• Read profile.json by the pathlib.Path.read_text method to avoid the unclosed file exception [@folix-01] #75

Internal:

• Update plone/meta configuration [@ericof] #73
• Log traceback when creating a site fails [@pbauer] #82
• Bump plone.exportimport to 1.0.0a5 [@ericof] #83

1.0.0b4 (2024-04-03)

Bug fixes:

• Fix exporting files. [pbauer] #58

1.0.0b3 (2024-03-08)

Bug fixes:

• Fix importing blocks on the site-root. [pbauer] #56

Internal:

• Update configuration files. [plone devs] 6e36bcc4

1.0.0b2 (2023-10-11)

New features:

• Remove old blobs before exporting content [@ericof] #34
• Support to new export/import format with one content item per json file [@ericof] #47

1.0.0b1 (2023-07-10)

New features:

• Validate answers payload against jsonschema [@ericof] #38
• Allow distribution to pre process answers before site creation [@ericof] #39
• Override @system from plone.restapi to display distribution information [@ericof] #45

1.0.0a9 (2023-06-27)

Bug fixes:

• Allow setting default_language "default" value [@ericof] #36

1.0.0a8 (2023-06-25)

New features:

• Bump @rjsf/core to version 5.8.2 [@ericof] #35

1.0.0a7 (2023-06-24)

Bug fixes:

• Fix content export to json [@ericof] #33

1.0.0a6 (2023-06-23)

New features:

• Improve support for testing distributions [@ericof] #24
• Allow export only for distributions still in development [@ericof] #28
• Create a report for Plone sites created from a distribution [@ericof] #30
• Clean up exported content to remove references to portal.absolute_url() [@ericof] #32

Bug fixes:

• Content language should be allowed in portal configuration [@ericof] #23

Internal:

• Update configuration files. [plone devs] 047ec50d, 55bda5c9, d7e9e748

1.0.0a5 (2023-05-18)

Bug fixes:

• Import did not import any steps except content and portal. [pbauer] #22

1.0.0a4 (2023-05-18)

New features:

• Increase test coverage. [ericof] #12
• Implement JSON import of content [pbauer] #13
• Use mxdev. [ericof] #18
• Implement default content for default and classic distributions as JSON. [ericof] #20

1.0.0a3 (2023-02-08)

Bug fixes:

• Fix Basic Authentication for Chrome [@ericof] #10

1.0.0a2 (2023-02-08)

New features:

• Change overview page favicon to use Plone logo [@ericof] #7
• Set content creation on default and classic distributions to be default. [@ericof] #9

Bug fixes:

• Use ajv8 with Ajv2019 class validator to fix function nested too deeply on Firefox [@ericof] #4
• Handle authentication when /acl_users does not support cookie extraction [@ericof] #6

1.0.0a1 (2023-02-08)

New features:

• Initial implementation of plone.distribution [@ericof] #1

1.0.0 (Unreleased)