What InFlow is
InFlow is a Content Management System (CMS) developed by noze, built on Zope and the Content Management Framework (CMF). The system provided full portal management — from content creation and review to publication — through a web interface accessible from any browser, with no client software required.
Main features
Multi-role user management
InFlow supported five user categories with distinct permissions:
- Administrator — system management, user creation, access to statistics, content publishing and removal
- Editorial manager — review, approval or rejection of content submitted by editors, with the ability to comment and return items for revision
- Editor — content creation in a personal area, web event creation, editing of own unpublished content
- Registered user — access to portal services, forums, personal profile, mailing lists
- Anonymous user — browsing of public content and self-registration
Editorial workflow
At the heart of InFlow was a structured editorial workflow: editors created content in their own area, requested publication by setting the status to “pending review”, and the editorial manager could approve, edit or return the content to the editor for a new editing session. Status notifications were sent to both roles. Publication could be deferred via a scheduled start date.
Content types
- Articles — with author, title, keywords, description, HTML body, images
- News — with creation and expiry dates, displayed in chronologically ordered boxes
- Files — upload of images, archives, PDF documents
- Links — organised in hierarchical categories
- Web events — containers that could include articles, files and links
Community services
- Forums — created by editors, with threading, search by subject/author/date, moderation
- Mailing lists — newsletter delivery to registered users, with automatic scheduling at regular intervals
- Access statistics — hits, visits, traffic, per-domain analysis, time distribution, error tracking
Architecture
The technology stack comprised:
- Trustix Linux — security-oriented distribution
- Apache — frontend web server with reverse proxy to Zope
- ZServer — Zope application server, supporting multiple instances for load balancing
- ZODB — Zope’s native object database
- Postfix — mail server
- Mailman — mailing list management
Project status
The project was archived when Plone — also built on Zope/CMF — gained wide adoption and a well-established community. noze chose to adopt Plone directly, bringing into it modules and features originally developed for InFlow.