| Because it sits on top of the Zope Application Server, Plone can run on anything that Zope runs on ”and that's a long list that includes most flavors of Linux/Unix, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OS X. As with any software, the more powerful the machine is in terms of processor and RAM, the better the application will run. For production usage, the minimum requirements should be at least a processor speed of 1.5Ghz, 1GB of RAM, and about 100MB of hard drive space. Zope and Plone will work just fine on a machine with 256MB of RAM or a processor less than 1Ghz, but those should be test machines only ”you don't want tens of thousands of accesses sucking the life out of that little box. If you do not meet the minimum requirements exactly, or if you have some interesting combination of a moderately fast processor but more RAM than you can shake a stick at, there are plenty of ways to fine-tune your installation to take advantage of the items at your disposal. You'll learn more about these techniques in Chapter 8, "Technical Administration." When Plone is up and running, it becomes a client-based application, and the client used to access it is your web browser. The core Plone templates are based on current HTML standards, so all browsers that adhere to standards can be used. These include the following: In fact, any browser that handles basic HTML and form input, and that accepts cookies can be used with Plone, although the overall display might not appear as intended. In other words, your PDA or web-enabled mobile phone might be capable of successfully browsing a Plone-based site. |
