Setting Your Preferences

After logging in to a Plone web site, you can change your personal preferences for information about your identity and choice of web site settings.

After logging in, your full name will be posted on the top-right corner of the screen. Click your name to open the dropdown, then click on the Dashboard link to go to your personal area:

You will see the dashboard** panel:

When you log in for the first time, your dashboard will be empty, as the Info message explains. Portlets are specific "views" of different types of content. You can choose which ones you want in your dashboard by clicking the Edit tab, but we'll get to that in a second.

First, let's look at the Preferences link in the previous dropdown, which will bring up the personal preferences edit panel:

Date entry fields include:

  • Full Name- If your name is common, include your middle initial or middle name.
  • E-mail address - REQUIRED - You may receive emails from the web site system, or from a message board, if installed, etc. When an item is required, a little red square will show alongside the item.
  • Location*text box* - This is the name of your city, town, state, province, or whatever you wish to provide*. *
  • Language preference selection menu - Plone excels at offering multilingual support.
  • Biography text box - Enter a short description of yourself here, about a paragraph or so in length.
  • Home page web address - If you have your own web site or an area at a photo-sharing web site, for instance, enter the web address here, if you wish, so people can find out more about you.
  • Content editor selection menu - You have the choice of using TinyMCE or Kupu, which lets you edit web pages with a nice graphical interface, or using a basic editing panel, which is good if you are accustomed to writing web pages using HTML (the basic "code" of web pages). The default setting for new sites is to use TinyMCE, and is assumed in this user manual.
  • Enable external editing checkbox - This is for switching on and off an "external" editor, if one has been installed by the web site administrator. Use of an "external" editor is mainly for web designers and programmers who do more editing of actual code, but it could be useful for volume page creation using specialized text mark-up languages. (Don't worry about this setting if you haven't heard anything about it from your web site administrator).
  • Portrait photograph upload - The portrait photograph will appear as a small image or thumbnail-size image, so it is best to use a head shot or upper-torso shot for this.

You can change your preferences whenever you wish.