Volto

Introduction

Volto is a React-based frontend for content management systems, currently supporting three backend implementations: Plone, Guillotina and a NodeJS reference implementation.

Plone is a CMS built on Python with over 17 years of experience.

Plone has very interesting features that appeal to developers and users alike, such as customizable content types, hierarchical URL object traversing and a sophisticated content workflow powered by a granular permissions model. This allows you to build anything from simple websites to enterprise-grade intranets.

Volto exposes all these features and communicates with Plone via its mature REST API. Volto has the ability of being highly themable and customizable.

Volto also supports other APIs like Guillotina, a Python resource management system, inspired by Plone and using the same basic concepts like traversal, content types and permissions model.

Last but not least, it also supports a Volto Nodejs-based backend reference API implementation that demos how other systems could also use Volto to display and create content through it.

Quick Start

First get all the requirements installed on your system.

Prerequisites

• Node.js LTS (12.x)
• Python 3.7.x / 2.7.x or
• Docker (if using the Plone/Guillotina docker images)

Create Volto App

Create a new Volto project by using the create-volto-app utility.

It will bootstrap a Volto project in a folder of your choice with all the required boilerplate to start customizing your Volto site.

$ npm install -g yarn
$ npm install -g @plone/create-volto-app
$ create-volto-app myvoltoproject
$ cd myvoltoproject

Although we install and use yarn, the create-volto-app tool still needs to be installed using npm -g because yarn has a different implementation of global installs.

Bootstrap the Plone API backend

We recommend Plone as backend of choice for Volto.

You can bootstrap a ready Docker Plone container with all the dependencies and ready for Volto use:

docker run -it --rm --name=plone -p 8080:8080 -e SITE=Plone -e ADDONS="kitconcept.volto" -e ZCML="kitconcept.volto.cors" -e PROFILES="kitconcept.volto:default-homepage" plone

or as an alternative if you have experience with Plone and you have all the dependencies installed on your system, you can use the supplied buildout in the api folder by issuing the command:

make build-backend

Start Volto

Once inside your Volto project folder:

yarn start

Browsing

Go to http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Demo

You can try a Volto online demo in https://volto.kitconcept.com

Volto in Production

Volto is actively developed since 2017 and used in production since 2018 on the following websites:

• VHS Ehrenamtsportal (Website to help volunteers that help refugees for the German Adult Education Association, developed by kitconcept GmbH, 2018)
• Zeelandia (Corporate website for one of the leading backery ingrediences manufactors in Germany, developed by kitconcept GmbH, 2019)
• Excellence at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Website for the excellence initiative of the Humboldt University Berlin, developed by kitconcept GmbH, 2019)
• Forest Information System for Europe (Thematic website focusing on European forests, developed by Eau de Web, 2019)
• Talke Carrer Website (Carrer website for Talke, one of the leading a chemical and petrochemical logistics companies in Germany, developed by kitconcept GmbH, 2020)
• Stradanove (Website of the Department of Youth Policies of the Municipality of Modena, developed by RedTurtle, 2020)
• Study guide at University of Jyväskylä (Static website where Volto is used as a headless CMS for authoring additional content, 2020)
• Nuova Voce Ecologista (Website of Nuova Voce Ecologista, an Italian green Party, 2020)
• Please create a new issue or pull request to add your Volto-site here!

Documentation

You can find the (beta) documentation in http://docs.voltocms.com

Training

A detailed training on how to create your own website using Volto is available as part of the Plone training docs at https://training.plone.org/5/volto/index.html.

Talks

Plone Conference Ferrara 2019

Víctor Fernández de Alba - Plone Beyond 2020: Jump into Volto today!

Rob Gietema - How to create your own Volto site!

Timo Stollenwerk - On the Road - Plone 6 and Beyond

Rodrigo Ferreira de Souza - Data migration to Plone 5.2 and Volto

Nicola Zambello - A Volto story: building a website by prototyping

Luca Pisani - Plone and React.js: An interview to Volto

Plone Conference Tokyo 2018

Rob Gietema - Volto

Rob Gietema / Víctor Fernández de Alba - Volto Extensibility Story

Víctor Fernández de Alba - Theming Volto

Timo Stollenwerk / Víctor Fernández de Alba / Ramon Navarro - Volto Case Studies

Timo Stollenwerk - Reinventing Plone, Roadmap to the Modern Web

Browser support

Volto works well with any modern (and updated) browser, including their mobile flavors: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge.

We do not guarantee that browsers who were deprecated by their vendors (e.g. Internet Explorer 11) will be supported by Volto in the future.

Upgrades

You can find the upgrade guide here: https://docs.voltocms.com/upgrade-guide/

Volto Development

For Volto development you need all the requirements already mentioned on the Quick Start section.

Checkout the Volto repository

git clone https://github.com/plone/volto.git

Install dependencies

yarn

Install a backend

Plone (recommended)

Either using a Docker image

docker run -it --rm --name=plone -p 8080:8080 -e SITE=Plone -e ADDONS="kitconcept.volto" -e ZCML="kitconcept.volto.cors" -e PROFILES="kitconcept.volto:default-homepage" plone

or using the convenience makefile command:

make start-backend-docker

or running Plone on your machine (advanced), additional dependencies might be required, only for Plone experienced integrators/developers. Check the Plone Installation Documentation.

make build-backend

Guillotina (experimental)

It still doesn't support the full API/features that Plone provides.

docker-compose -f g-api/docker-compose.yml up -d

or using the convenience makefile command:

make start-backend-docker-guillotina

Run frontend

yarn start

Browsing

Browse to http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Testing

yarn test

Releasing

For ease the release process, we use release-it utility that helps with the process.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/release-it

For using it and start a release you need to fulfill the requirements:

• Have permissions to push on master branch
• Have permissions on the @plone org on npmjs.com
• Have a environment variable (GITHUB_TOKEN) with a GitHub personal token with permissions to write the Volto Release page on GitHub (https://www.npmjs.com/package/release-it#github-releases)

Then the command for release:

yarn release

a dry-release command for testing the output is also available:

yarn dry-release

Acceptance testing

Volto uses Cypress for browser-based acceptance testing.

Run acceptance tests (with the Plone backend):

yarn ci:cypress:run

Run acceptance tests (with the Guillotina backend):

yarn ci:cypress:run:guillotina

Writing new acceptance tests

When writing new acceptance tests you usually want to minimize the time it takes to run the tests.

To do so, start three individual terminal sessions for running the Plone backend, the Volto frontend and the acceptance tests.

Start the Plone backend:

make start-test-backend

Start the Volto frontend:

make start-test-frontend

Open Cypress and start acceptance tests:

make start-test

Go to the cypress/integration folder to see existing tests. This directory is hot reloaded with your changes as you write the tests. For more information on how to write Cypress tests:

https://docs.cypress.io

Running the acceptance tests with Guillotina backend

If you want to use Guillotina as backend to run the tests you should run:

yarn ci:start-api-plone-guillotina

Translations

If you would like contribute to translate Volto into several languages, please, read the Internationalization (i18n) guide.

License

MIT License. Copyrights hold the Plone Foundation.

See LICENSE.md for details.