Hi there, We're betting our business on Zope, and we're in the process of setting up a good Zope development and hosting environment. We're running into some problems, however, that we'd like the list's feedback on. What is best practice, etc... It still seems awfully backwards the way we've got it figured out. Situation We're using Zope and PTK (newest releases via CVS) as a base. On top of this we will build our own extensions of the PTK, and on top of this again will be the portal instances for each client... Yes, we build websites for clients. We have a development server and a production server. We have a ZEO setup, but we're not using it at this time for stability reasons. If we were to draw a layered model, it would be like this: client layer: client-website-1 client-website-2 etc... our reusable layer: our-own-DemoPortal python-product-inherited-from-PTKDemo DC-PTK layer: PTKDemo (and implicitly PTKBase) DC-Zope layer: Zope ExoPortal is our own DemoPortal, a "copy" of DemoPortal with our own additions and changes. It inherits from ExoToolkit, not PTKDemo. ExoToolkit is our own python product that inherits from PTKDemo. This should allow us to build a layer above DC's PTK. Things are complicated by having to deal with sites in different stages of their lifecycle, different servers (dev and prod), several developers, products in both the ZODB and on the filesystem, etc. In addition, changes will happen at all layers, by different parties. The Problem How do we develop, and keep all the client websites working all the time, while maximizing reuse; i.e., having them benefit from upgrades done by different parties (in this case us and DC) at different levels? A walkthrough of the layers Client websites are instances of the ExoPortal.Portal class, and they have a set of interface DTML methods copied from the interface directory. We want the client websites to take advantage of upgrades in the ExoPortal.Portal class, and we want to have a production version running, while at the same time working on a development version, which we will stage/test, and later replace with the production version. We can use Zope versions for development versions, and merge them into the production version, but we'd rather do big development on a local development server and merge the changes into the production server when they've been tested. The problem then is: how do we do that? We only want to update presentation and logic objects, not content objects, and the way Zope is now it's hard to see how to cleanly separate content from presentation and logic all the time. ExoPortal poses its own problems. It is basically similar to DemoPortal, and we see now other way to keep it synchronized with DemoPortal than to manual inspect new versions of DemoPortal and incorporate the changes into ExoPortal. Several servers doesn't pose a big problem as the copies of ExoPortal should be the same; there is no "content" to worry about, only logic and presentation. Of course, changes to the template interface DTML methods will not automatically be reflected in the client websites, but that's expected and acceptable; there is no other way. ExoPortal has to be kept in sync with the ExoToolkit the same way DemoPortal is kept in sync with PTKDemo. ExoToolkit inherits from PTKDemo. Intuitively it seems better to have it inherit from PTKBase, but it turns out that way we'll miss out on a lot of the functionality of the PTK that's put in the PTKDemo. ExoToolkit is file system based, of course, and shouldn't have any user interface files (unlike PTKDemo that has DTML files for all the portal content classes on the filesystem). When PTKDemo is updated, ExoToolkit might break, so we have to take care to fix it every time. PTKDemo+PTKBase and DemoPortal constitutes the PTK layer, controlled by DC. We use CVS to keep them up-to-date. We reuse PTKDemo through inheritance (automatically), but DemoPortal can't be reused that way so we have to do manual inspection of changes in the new DemoPortal for each update, and incorporate the changes into ExoPortal. Separating presentation, logic and content Logic and presentation are updated by us (programmers and graphic designers), but content is managed by the client. We need to be able to develop presentation and logic on a development server, move it over to the production server, without affecting the content already on the production server. Currently I don't see an easy way to separate presentation, logic and content without giving up working in Zope objects and putting all the content in a SQL database. Does anyone have experience with this? How is Zope.org updated? I'm sorry if my questions are stupid, but I'm sure many people are having the same problems. I have read most of Zope.org without finding obvious answers. I think we need to figure out what are the "best practices". Bye, -- Bjorn Stabell <bjorn@exoweb.net> Exoweb - One-to-one web solutions w http://www.exoweb.net/ t +86 13701174004