What you need to know about Plone Portlets

1. Adding a Portlet to the Left/Right side of your page

Supposing you have a portlet called portlet_easterbunnies (say) you want to add to a site:

• Type /manage to the end of your url to go into the ZMI.

• Click on the properties tab.

• Add a new property with name left_slots/ right_slots (depending whether you want your portlet on the left or right side), type lines. You can leave 'value' blank.

• Now you have a new box appearing. Inside this box you should type:   here/portlet_easterbunnies/macros/portlet and press 'save'.
  

Important note: By default, Plone creates left_slots and right_slots properties at the root of the site and lets whatever you put in there carry on through the rest of the site. If you add a left_slot or right_slot property, then this overides the one created at the root of the site. So if there's a portlet that was added in site root but which you'd like here too, you have to add it in by hand.

On the other hand, if for a page you want to remove all portlets and let the page content take up a space where the portlets would have been, just create a left_slots or right_slots property and leave it blank.

2. Portlet Types

Generic Plone portlets: these come with Plone by default

• portlet_navigation: the navigation bar
• portlet_news:  all published news items end up here
• portlet_events: all published event items end up here
• portlet_review: all content in 'pending' state - only site reviewers can see this when they are logged in.
• portlet_related: shows content related to the current page: by default, not viewable by anonymous user
• portlet_calendar: mmm, take a guess...
  

3rd Party Products:

• portlet_contentpanel: comes with CMF Content Panels. A multipurpose panel, able to show anything from static text to calendars.
• portlet_smart_list: comes with Vasudevaservice's very own vsCore. A portlet for storing smart folders.
• portlet_static: also from vsCore - stores static documents.
• portlet_vsrandomdocument and portlet_vsrandomimage: also from vsCore; displays a random document/ image every time the page is loaded.