Hi all, The rumours are true. :) An effort has been going on for a while to improve the zope.org experience and thereby help make Zope more accessible to new users. I've helped co-ordinate it, but the project has been sanctioned by the Zope Foundation and driven by people like Martijn, Philipp, Wichert and others. Given Martijn's excellent blog post today (http://faassen.n--tree.net/blog/view/weblog/2008/04/05/0) and recent progress we've made, I thought it timely to open up and ask for your help. Here's what we have achieved so far: - A great design by Oliver Ruhm, paid for by Lovely Systems - A Plone 3 site hosted by Lovely Systems - A skin for this site by Denis Mishunoff - A skeleton content structure - A plan for going forward Now we need people to help contribute content, review the content that's already there and tie up a few loose ends. You can see current state of play here: http://zode01.lovelysystems.com. The original design mockups from Oliver are here: http://woimmer.com/presenter/zope.org/1.html We have agreed a plan going forward with the Zope Foundation. Basically, we want to move the current zope.org off into a separate domain, e.g. old.zope.org. We explicitly do not want to port existing content from zope.org wholesale, because (a) most of it's out of date and (b) this would be a huge effort. We'll need to provide some aliases for downloads that people (and buildouts) expect to find on zope.org, but this can be managed using Plone's RedirectionTool. We also want to start small. Some things, like planet.zope.org, wiki.zope.org and foundation.zope.org stay where they are for now. Existing documentation should be ported over manually, and subject to quality and relevancy review in the process. We want to tackle the external face of Zope first. Membership of the site will be by invitation (i.e. ask me and I'll give you an account), for content authors only. We don't want to allow arbitrary "home folders" - at least not just yet. Again, some things probably need to be moved over, but there is too much cruft on the old zope.org to move it wholesale. There has been a lot of discussion around the "message" we want to send. The current zope.org is quite confusing to people who are not familiar with the intricate history of Zope. In short, the message we want to project is: - Zope is an established, mature, "enterprise ready" project - If you don't know where to start, start with Grok (note that Grok has its own website, which we link to when relevant) - There is a common framework that unites Zope 2, Zope 3 (the app server) and Grok. We often call this "Zope 3" internally, but for the purposes of explanation, we will try to refer to the core "web application" libraries as the "Zope Libaries". - We want to frame the ZODB as something that can be used without Zope as well as an integral part of Zope To that end, the website is divided up into sections: - "Home" gives a quick overview and tries to get people excited - "Get" gives download instructions for the impatient - "Taste" whets the reader's appetite with some exciting code examples that explain how Zope is different - "Projects" gives an explanation of how the different Zope projects fit together (Zope 2, Zope 3, Grok, CMF, ZODB). Each is then given a subfolder that contains a standard structure: A front page that explains the project in more detail, "Get" (downloads), "Taste" (as above, but for a particular project) and "Learn". The "Learn" section should contain relevant, up-to-date documentation. - "Community" gives some details about how to join the Zope community - "Foundation" links to the Foundation site for now. If the Foundation website maintainers want to move into this site in the future, they are of course more than welcome to. Now, you'll notice that a lot of content is missing! This is where we need volunteers. o Critical reviewer -- I would like someone to review the text on the site from time to time and offer feedback on clarity, style, consistency and message. This person may either act as editor and change things on the fly, or just ask the relevant author to change something. Ideally, this is someone with an opinion on "Zope" as a whole and its place in the world. Jan Ulrich Hasecke has volunteered for this. I think we may need two or three people for this role, though. o "Get" section content champion -- needs to complete this section, writing about grokproject, zopeproject and probably a manual/source install. Needs to write clear instructions that work on all target platforms. We can split this section into sub-pages if need be. o "Taste" section champion -- needs to complete this section with some "tasty" code examples that get people excited about Zope. They don't have to be 100% complete applications; rather, they should show what sets Zope apart. A developer should be able to read this and think "I could get with this". I think we can maybe adopt something from the Appetizers section on worldcookery.com, or invent new examples. They could use Grok or plain Zope 3. This probably requires something with a strong technical background. I'd love for this to be Philipp, since he always does well with this kind of thing in presentations and training, though I'm not sure how much time he'll have. o "Community" section champion -- needs to provide some details about the Zope mailing lists/forums and chatroom. Perhaps include etiquette as well. This can probably be cribbed from plone.org/support. Then, we need a champion for each of the sub-projects. These are: - Zope 3 and the "Zope Libraries" -- this is the most important one in the short term! - Zope 2 - CMF - ZODB Grok has its own home page, though I think we should keep referring to it where it makes sense. Please reply to this thread if you are interested in helping out! I know various people have expressed an interest in the past. I hope they'll reconfirm their commitment now. Hopefully, we can get the content completed in a few weeks and then begin the move to making this the thing that people see when they hit zope.org. Cheers, Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
On Apr 5, 2008, at 17:52 , Martin Aspeli wrote:
Then, we need a champion for each of the sub-projects. These are:
- Zope 3 and the "Zope Libraries" -- this is the most important one in the short term!
- Zope 2
- CMF
- ZODB
I'm volunteering for the CMF. jens
On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
To that end, the website is divided up into sections:
- "Home" gives a quick overview and tries to get people excited
- "Get" gives download instructions for the impatient
- "Taste" whets the reader's appetite with some exciting code examples that explain how Zope is different
- "Projects" gives an explanation of how the different Zope projects fit together (Zope 2, Zope 3, Grok, CMF, ZODB). Each is then given a subfolder that contains a standard structure: A front page that explains the project in more detail, "Get" (downloads), "Taste" (as above, but for a particular project) and "Learn". The "Learn" section should contain relevant, up-to-date documentation.
- "Community" gives some details about how to join the Zope community
- "Foundation" links to the Foundation site for now. If the Foundation website maintainers want to move into this site in the future, they are of course more than welcome to.
I'm wondering where the "Documentation" section is? I'd like to volunteer for *that* section. By the way, the design looks pretty nice. -- Paul Carduner http://www.carduner.net
Paul Carduner wrote:
I'm wondering where the "Documentation" section is? I'd like to volunteer for *that* section. By the way, the design looks pretty nice.
There's one (called "Learn") for each project, i.e. zope 2, zope 3, cmf, zodb. Which one would you like to contribute to? Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
Paul Carduner wrote:
I'm wondering where the "Documentation" section is? I'd like to volunteer for *that* section. By the way, the design looks pretty nice.
There's one (called "Learn") for each project, i.e. zope 2, zope 3, cmf, zodb.
Which one would you like to contribute to?
I'd like to contribute to the Zope 3 one. I see the "learn" tab on the mockup images, but not on http://zode01.lovelysystems.com/. I have a lot of questions about how this might work but I imagine they will all be answered once I have an account. -- Paul Carduner http://www.carduner.net
Paul Carduner wrote:
On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
Paul Carduner wrote:
I'm wondering where the "Documentation" section is? I'd like to volunteer for *that* section. By the way, the design looks pretty nice.
There's one (called "Learn") for each project, i.e. zope 2, zope 3, cmf, zodb.
Which one would you like to contribute to?
I'd like to contribute to the Zope 3 one. I see the "learn" tab on the mockup images, but not on http://zode01.lovelysystems.com/. I have a lot of questions about how this might work but I imagine they will all be answered once I have an account.
There's no content that isn't visible to anonymous on the site. Basically, we originally thought we would have one documentation/"learn" section for all Zope technologies. However, it seemed to make more sense to have a folder for each sub-project (zope 2, zope 3, cmf, zodb) and keep documentation there. What questions do you have? Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
On Apr 5, 2008, at 12:11 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
There's no content that isn't visible to anonymous on the site.
Basically, we originally thought we would have one documentation/"learn" section for all Zope technologies. However, it seemed to make more sense to have a folder for each sub-project (zope 2, zope 3, cmf, zodb) and keep documentation there.
What questions do you have?
Ah now I understand and found the Zope 3 section. One question I have is how the site might integrate with the apidoc tool. At least with Zope 3, a lot of good updated documentation lives in the svn repository in the form of Restructured .txt files. All it would take to make these documents easier to find and read is to hook them into apidoc and make a nicer skin for the apidoc book section with the look and feel of the new site. Basically, I want to write documentation once (in svn) and have it appear nicely formatted in multiple places: pypi, apidoc, zope.org, and wherever else. Will this be possible/is it part of the plan? -- Paul Carduner http://www.carduner.net
Paul Carduner wrote:
On Apr 5, 2008, at 12:11 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
There's no content that isn't visible to anonymous on the site.
Basically, we originally thought we would have one documentation/"learn" section for all Zope technologies. However, it seemed to make more sense to have a folder for each sub-project (zope 2, zope 3, cmf, zodb) and keep documentation there.
What questions do you have?
Ah now I understand and found the Zope 3 section. One question I have is how the site might integrate with the apidoc tool. At least with Zope 3, a lot of good updated documentation lives in the svn repository in the form of Restructured .txt files. All it would take to make these documents easier to find and read is to hook them into apidoc and make a nicer skin for the apidoc book section with the look and feel of the new site. Basically, I want to write documentation once (in svn) and have it appear nicely formatted in multiple places: pypi, apidoc, zope.org, and wherever else. Will this be possible/is it part of the plan?
In the short term, I suggest we publish APIdocs standalone somewhere like api.zope.org. I think it should be integrated eventually (and I think this could be done quite nicely with a custom content type), but I don't want to hold up publishing of the website for the sake of technology development. We would then just link to this documentation as necessary. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
Look at Sphinx for providing brilliant access to ReST doc. http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ doing no more than adding a .. module:: <modname> directive to a ReST file causes it to be converted to html, latex or pdf indexed and searchable. placing <modname> in the .. toctree:: directive creates the proper links to the module doc I really think Sphinx can easily add a lot of value to existing Zope doc.
From that starting point, Sphinx offers lots of tools for enhancing access to, and presentation of, ReStructuredText
It's being used for the official Python doc, no fly-by-night outfit. Thanks, Kent On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Paul Carduner <paulcarduner@gmail.com> wrote:
On Apr 5, 2008, at 12:11 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
There's no content that isn't visible to anonymous on the site.
Basically, we originally thought we would have one documentation/"learn" section for all Zope technologies. However, it seemed to make more sense to have a folder for each sub-project (zope 2, zope 3, cmf, zodb) and keep documentation there.
What questions do you have?
Ah now I understand and found the Zope 3 section. One question I have is how the site might integrate with the apidoc tool. At least with Zope 3, a lot of good updated documentation lives in the svn repository in the form of Restructured .txt files. All it would take to make these documents easier to find and read is to hook them into apidoc and make a nicer skin for the apidoc book section with the look and feel of the new site. Basically, I want to write documentation once (in svn) and have it appear nicely formatted in multiple places: pypi, apidoc, zope.org, and wherever else. Will this be possible/is it part of the plan?
--
Paul Carduner http://www.carduner.net _______________________________________________
Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists -http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
Kent Tenney wrote:
Look at Sphinx for providing brilliant access to ReST doc. http://sphinx.pocoo.org/
I think looking at Sphinx is definitely a worthwhile effort. That said, I agree with Martin that we shouldn't let the new website effort be held up by (or distracted by) technological fixes. Let's focus on introduction texts primarily, at least to get the initial website in the air. If people want to explore how Sphinx can be used to publish more technical documentation about Zope 3, I think this would be a very good effort, though. Perhaps start with a smaller Zope packages, such as zope.component, and see how it goes. The hard part will remain the actual writing of the content. Regards, Martijn
Martijn Faassen wrote:
Kent Tenney wrote:
Look at Sphinx for providing brilliant access to ReST doc. http://sphinx.pocoo.org/
I think looking at Sphinx is definitely a worthwhile effort. That said, I agree with Martin that we shouldn't let the new website effort be held up by (or distracted by) technological fixes. Let's focus on introduction texts primarily, at least to get the initial website in the air.
If people want to explore how Sphinx can be used to publish more technical documentation about Zope 3, I think this would be a very good effort, though. Perhaps start with a smaller Zope packages, such as zope.component, and see how it goes. The hard part will remain the actual writing of the content.
Also, the main zope.org site may not be the best UI for browsing and searching API documentation. Sun has a separate design for Javadocs on its site; Python has a separate layout for its documentation on python.org. Having an api.zope.org that's generated using a different toolset, which we link to when necessary, is probably better for the end user and easier for us to maintain. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
Hi Martin. I would like to help with Zope 3 but could not commit to championing the effort as much as I might like to due to time constraints. I am prepared to write some articles, help with an introduction, or help review in conjunction with someone leading the Zope 3 effort. Are any of the lovely or zope corp folks on the z3 side willing to champion or participate? Is there an outline somewhere that I can determine something concrete to work on? Let me know. I like the design BTW and this is definitely a good news development. Regards, David Martin Aspeli wrote:
Hi all,
The rumours are true. :) An effort has been going on for a while to improve the zope.org experience and thereby help make Zope more accessible to new users.
I've helped co-ordinate it, but the project has been sanctioned by the Zope Foundation and driven by people like Martijn, Philipp, Wichert and others. Given Martijn's excellent blog post today (http://faassen.n--tree.net/blog/view/weblog/2008/04/05/0) and recent progress we've made, I thought it timely to open up and ask for your help.
Here's what we have achieved so far:
- A great design by Oliver Ruhm, paid for by Lovely Systems - A Plone 3 site hosted by Lovely Systems - A skin for this site by Denis Mishunoff - A skeleton content structure - A plan for going forward
Now we need people to help contribute content, review the content that's already there and tie up a few loose ends.
You can see current state of play here: http://zode01.lovelysystems.com.
The original design mockups from Oliver are here: http://woimmer.com/presenter/zope.org/1.html
We have agreed a plan going forward with the Zope Foundation. Basically, we want to move the current zope.org off into a separate domain, e.g. old.zope.org. We explicitly do not want to port existing content from zope.org wholesale, because (a) most of it's out of date and (b) this would be a huge effort. We'll need to provide some aliases for downloads that people (and buildouts) expect to find on zope.org, but this can be managed using Plone's RedirectionTool.
We also want to start small. Some things, like planet.zope.org, wiki.zope.org and foundation.zope.org stay where they are for now. Existing documentation should be ported over manually, and subject to quality and relevancy review in the process.
We want to tackle the external face of Zope first. Membership of the site will be by invitation (i.e. ask me and I'll give you an account), for content authors only. We don't want to allow arbitrary "home folders" - at least not just yet. Again, some things probably need to be moved over, but there is too much cruft on the old zope.org to move it wholesale.
There has been a lot of discussion around the "message" we want to send. The current zope.org is quite confusing to people who are not familiar with the intricate history of Zope. In short, the message we want to project is:
- Zope is an established, mature, "enterprise ready" project
- If you don't know where to start, start with Grok (note that Grok has its own website, which we link to when relevant)
- There is a common framework that unites Zope 2, Zope 3 (the app server) and Grok. We often call this "Zope 3" internally, but for the purposes of explanation, we will try to refer to the core "web application" libraries as the "Zope Libaries".
- We want to frame the ZODB as something that can be used without Zope as well as an integral part of Zope
To that end, the website is divided up into sections:
- "Home" gives a quick overview and tries to get people excited
- "Get" gives download instructions for the impatient
- "Taste" whets the reader's appetite with some exciting code examples that explain how Zope is different
- "Projects" gives an explanation of how the different Zope projects fit together (Zope 2, Zope 3, Grok, CMF, ZODB). Each is then given a subfolder that contains a standard structure: A front page that explains the project in more detail, "Get" (downloads), "Taste" (as above, but for a particular project) and "Learn". The "Learn" section should contain relevant, up-to-date documentation.
- "Community" gives some details about how to join the Zope community
- "Foundation" links to the Foundation site for now. If the Foundation website maintainers want to move into this site in the future, they are of course more than welcome to.
Now, you'll notice that a lot of content is missing! This is where we need volunteers.
o Critical reviewer -- I would like someone to review the text on the site from time to time and offer feedback on clarity, style, consistency and message. This person may either act as editor and change things on the fly, or just ask the relevant author to change something. Ideally, this is someone with an opinion on "Zope" as a whole and its place in the world. Jan Ulrich Hasecke has volunteered for this. I think we may need two or three people for this role, though.
o "Get" section content champion -- needs to complete this section, writing about grokproject, zopeproject and probably a manual/source install. Needs to write clear instructions that work on all target platforms. We can split this section into sub-pages if need be.
o "Taste" section champion -- needs to complete this section with some "tasty" code examples that get people excited about Zope. They don't have to be 100% complete applications; rather, they should show what sets Zope apart. A developer should be able to read this and think "I could get with this". I think we can maybe adopt something from the Appetizers section on worldcookery.com, or invent new examples. They could use Grok or plain Zope 3. This probably requires something with a strong technical background. I'd love for this to be Philipp, since he always does well with this kind of thing in presentations and training, though I'm not sure how much time he'll have.
o "Community" section champion -- needs to provide some details about the Zope mailing lists/forums and chatroom. Perhaps include etiquette as well. This can probably be cribbed from plone.org/support.
Then, we need a champion for each of the sub-projects. These are:
- Zope 3 and the "Zope Libraries" -- this is the most important one in the short term!
- Zope 2
- CMF
- ZODB
Grok has its own home page, though I think we should keep referring to it where it makes sense.
Please reply to this thread if you are interested in helping out! I know various people have expressed an interest in the past. I hope they'll reconfirm their commitment now. Hopefully, we can get the content completed in a few weeks and then begin the move to making this the thing that people see when they hit zope.org.
Cheers, Martin
On Sat, 05 Apr 2008 08:52:07 -0700, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
Now we need people to help contribute content, review the content that's already there and tie up a few loose ends.
You can see current state of play here: http://zode01.lovelysystems.com.
Awesome! It looks great, and is a fantastic starting point. Some quick feedback from my initial browsing of the site, do with it what you want. ;) - Try not to be too clever with the "Taste"/"Get" and other links. People actually scan for links that are similar from other projects, and having to interpret/understand them is confusing. I would definitely switch "Taste" to "Examples", and possibly "Get" to "Download" (as a bonus, you get a bigger click target ;). - The list of companies using Zope includes several examples that look very out of place (i-Gift?), and even some that went bankrupt 7 years ago (Storm Linux). Try to narrow it down to either global brands that anyone will recognize (Red Hat, NASA, GE), or — where this is not possible — go for a market leader in that particular area (plone.org for example lists Oxfam — while not necessarily known by the average person, everybody in the non-profit space know who they are). - The icons for the "Key Features of Zope" look very out of place. Underwear for standards? Donuts for community? Makes no sense to me, at least. :) - I assume the front page text is still being worked on, but "Zope is an open source framework for building web applications" is repeated 3 times on the front page. Nice work, everyone! -- Alexander Limi · http://limi.net
Alexander Limi wrote:
On Sat, 05 Apr 2008 08:52:07 -0700, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
Now we need people to help contribute content, review the content that's already there and tie up a few loose ends.
You can see current state of play here: http://zode01.lovelysystems.com.
Awesome! It looks great, and is a fantastic starting point.
Some quick feedback from my initial browsing of the site, do with it what you want. ;)
- Try not to be too clever with the "Taste"/"Get" and other links. People actually scan for links that are similar from other projects, and having to interpret/understand them is confusing. I would definitely switch "Taste" to "Examples", and possibly "Get" to "Download" (as a bonus, you get a bigger click target ;).
- The list of companies using Zope includes several examples that look very out of place (i-Gift?), and even some that went bankrupt 7 years ago (Storm Linux). Try to narrow it down to either global brands that anyone will recognize (Red Hat, NASA, GE), or — where this is not possible — go for a market leader in that particular area (plone.org for example lists Oxfam — while not necessarily known by the average person, everybody in the non-profit space know who they are).
- The icons for the "Key Features of Zope" look very out of place. Underwear for standards? Donuts for community? Makes no sense to me, at least. :)
- I assume the front page text is still being worked on, but "Zope is an open source framework for building web applications" is repeated 3 times on the front page.
Thanks Alex! All the text is indeed very much draft. I really hope we get a few more volunteers so that we can get it to be more complete. Cheers, Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
On Apr 7, 2008, at 00:20 , Alexander Limi wrote:
- Try not to be too clever with the "Taste"/"Get" and other links. People actually scan for links that are similar from other projects, and having to interpret/understand them is confusing.
+1
- The list of companies using Zope includes several examples that look very out of place (i-Gift?), and even some that went bankrupt 7 years ago (Storm Linux). Try to narrow it down to either global brands that anyone will recognize (Red Hat, NASA, GE), or — where this is not possible — go for a market leader in that particular area (plone.org for example lists Oxfam — while not necessarily known by the average person, everybody in the non-profit space know who they are).
I believe the dev team copied what's on the current zope.org, which has a list of companies from 1999/2000 which has never been updated. It's definitely way out of date.
- The icons for the "Key Features of Zope" look very out of place. Underwear for standards? Donuts for community? Makes no sense to me, at least. :)
Yes, that's very true. I didn't want to say anything, I'm just glad something is happening. jens
Hi there, Alexander Limi wrote: [snip]
- Try not to be too clever with the "Taste"/"Get" and other links. People actually scan for links that are similar from other projects, and having to interpret/understand them is confusing. I would definitely switch "Taste" to "Examples", and possibly "Get" to "Download" (as a bonus, you get a bigger click target ;).
A strong +1 on this sentiment. [snip other valuable comments] Yeah, I know this is really a "me too" post, but I think we should err on the side of conventional for our website. We can't go from out-of-date boring to cutting edge hip in one giant leap; it won't be believable. Let's stick with what people know from other sites, and emphasize our serious rock-solid powerful flexibility experience thing. A few frills here and there are permitted, of course. Regards, Martijn
Martijn Faassen wrote:
Yeah, I know this is really a "me too" post, but I think we should err on the side of conventional for our website. We can't go from out-of-date boring to cutting edge hip in one giant leap; it won't be believable. Let's stick with what people know from other sites, and emphasize our serious rock-solid powerful flexibility experience thing.
+ sys.maxint
A few frills here and there are permitted, of course.
Actually, no frills please. They just come back to bite us every damned time. It looks like we're gonna get lumbered with Plone again but can we please please please make sure it's stable, conservative, maintainable release rather than some bleeding edge thing that becomes a total maintenance dead end? cheers, Chris -- Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting - http://www.simplistix.co.uk
Chris Withers wrote:
Martijn Faassen wrote:
Yeah, I know this is really a "me too" post, but I think we should err on the side of conventional for our website. We can't go from out-of-date boring to cutting edge hip in one giant leap; it won't be believable. Let's stick with what people know from other sites, and emphasize our serious rock-solid powerful flexibility experience thing.
+ sys.maxint
A few frills here and there are permitted, of course.
Actually, no frills please. They just come back to bite us every damned time. It looks like we're gonna get lumbered with Plone again but can we please please please make sure it's stable, conservative, maintainable release rather than some bleeding edge thing that becomes a total maintenance dead end?
Yes. That's the point. It's vanilla Plone (well, one custom content type for the "feature" that fronts each section, but it's trivial) with a simple skin, not the FrankePlone that runs the old site. As a case in point, Wichert upgraded it from 3.0 to 3.1rc in about ten minutes. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
Previously Martin Aspeli wrote:
Chris Withers wrote:
Martijn Faassen wrote:
Yeah, I know this is really a "me too" post, but I think we should err on the side of conventional for our website. We can't go from out-of-date boring to cutting edge hip in one giant leap; it won't be believable. Let's stick with what people know from other sites, and emphasize our serious rock-solid powerful flexibility experience thing.
+ sys.maxint
A few frills here and there are permitted, of course.
Actually, no frills please. They just come back to bite us every damned time. It looks like we're gonna get lumbered with Plone again but can we please please please make sure it's stable, conservative, maintainable release rather than some bleeding edge thing that becomes a total maintenance dead end?
Yes. That's the point. It's vanilla Plone (well, one custom content type for the "feature" that fronts each section, but it's trivial) with a simple skin, not the FrankePlone that runs the old site. As a case in point, Wichert upgraded it from 3.0 to 3.1rc in about ten minutes.
More like two minutes - the rest of the time was spent setting up supervisord for the installation. Also note that the entire deployment (except for the Data.fs of course) is available on svn.zope.org. Wichert. -- Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> It is simple to make things. http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.
Martin Aspeli wrote:
Yes. That's the point. It's vanilla Plone (well, one custom content type for the "feature" that fronts each section, but it's trivial) with a simple skin, not the FrankePlone that runs the old site. As a case in point, Wichert upgraded it from 3.0 to 3.1rc in about ten minutes.
Yes, because obviously 3.1rc is a stable, conservative, release... *sigh* Chris -- Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting - http://www.simplistix.co.uk
Previously Chris Withers wrote:
Martin Aspeli wrote:
Yes. That's the point. It's vanilla Plone (well, one custom content type for the "feature" that fronts each section, but it's trivial) with a simple skin, not the FrankePlone that runs the old site. As a case in point, Wichert upgraded it from 3.0 to 3.1rc in about ten minutes.
Yes, because obviously 3.1rc is a stable, conservative, release...
Chris, if you feel you can do better you're welcome to volunteer to help out. In the meantime I'ld like to have that I have a decent grasp of the stability of various Plone releases. Wichert. -- Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> It is simple to make things. http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.
Chris Withers wrote:
Martin Aspeli wrote:
Yes. That's the point. It's vanilla Plone (well, one custom content type for the "feature" that fronts each section, but it's trivial) with a simple skin, not the FrankePlone that runs the old site. As a case in point, Wichert upgraded it from 3.0 to 3.1rc in about ten minutes.
Yes, because obviously 3.1rc is a stable, conservative, release...
*sigh*
The site's not live yet. I have no interest in a further discussion about technology. We are where we are. I'm confident that we've made an appropriate platform choice, but that choice is only 10% of this effort. We need to focus on content, messages and structure. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
Chris Withers wrote:
Martijn Faassen wrote: [snip]
A few frills here and there are permitted, of course.
Actually, no frills please. They just come back to bite us every damned time. It looks like we're gonna get lumbered with Plone again but can we please please please make sure it's stable, conservative, maintainable release rather than some bleeding edge thing that becomes a total maintenance dead end?
Ah, I didn't mean feature-frills, I meant design-frills. I agree we should be cautious about features. The grok.zope.org Plone site works quite well so far and takes a conservative approach. Regards, Martijn
I'm thinking about volunteering for the zope2 section, but I already can say that I'm not an expert on all facets of zope2. However, helping out is the main concern now so something is better than nothing. I'm doubting about what to write / have examples for etc., as you can do a lot of zope3 technology in zope2 already, however there are some zope2 only things which should be mentioned as well (Plain Products, SimpleItem, tabs for ZMI, TTW development etc.), or should we really focus on the zope3 technology only? Taking the examples on worldcookery examples' as a base and pointing out the difference between the platforms is maybe a good idea. Does someone have a good vision how to structure this or have some concrete idea's? BTW : I see some people refer to something called "the Zope libraries", but for me it's unclear what is exactly meant by that (except "zope3 technology"). I think that a clear definition would help. Regards, Martijn (Jacobs) -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Let%27s-fix-the-damned-website-tp16514823p16787505.htm... Sent from the Zope - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Maerteijn wrote:
I'm thinking about volunteering for the zope2 section, but I already can say that I'm not an expert on all facets of zope2. However, helping out is the main concern now so something is better than nothing.
Absolutely. I don't think you need to be an expert to do a good job. In fact, I think it's much better if you're not an expert and know how to present something for non-experts.
I'm doubting about what to write / have examples for etc., as you can do a lot of zope3 technology in zope2 already, however there are some zope2 only things which should be mentioned as well (Plain Products, SimpleItem, tabs for ZMI, TTW development etc.), or should we really focus on the zope3 technology only?
There is a Zope 3 section, so I suggest we focus on the stuff that's unique to Zope 2, but explain where the Zope 3 stuff fits in.
Taking the examples on worldcookery examples' as a base and pointing out the difference between the platforms is maybe a good idea. Does someone have a good vision how to structure this or have some concrete idea's?
That may be useful. I think the key question should be "why would I want to use Zope 2, and how do I use it?"
BTW : I see some people refer to something called "the Zope libraries", but for me it's unclear what is exactly meant by that (except "zope3 technology"). I think that a clear definition would help.
The phrase is being worked into the zope.org text to try and explain to a non-Zope historian the role of the numerous Zope 3 packages that are just as useful in Zope 2/CMF/Plone/Python development as they are in a "Zope 3 only" environment. The fact that "Zope 3" is not a successor to "Zope 2" and that the two intermix significantly is probably the most difficult story we have to tell. From a Zope 2 perspective, it also says something about that platform being still relevant even as Zope 3 goes into version 3.4 and beyond. The Venn diagram at http://zode01.lovelysystems.com/projects illustrates this concept. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
Admittedly I ignored this, as these kinds of calls has gone out for years, and nothing happens. But this time it looks like it actually *will* happen, which is great. So here is my 2 centimes: On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 5:52 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
The rumours are true. :) An effort has been going on for a while to improve the zope.org experience and thereby help make Zope more accessible to new users.
Yay!
- A great design by Oliver Ruhm, paid for by Lovely Systems - A Plone 3 site hosted by Lovely Systems - A skin for this site by Denis Mishunoff - A skeleton content structure - A plan for going forward
Yay!
- "Projects" gives an explanation of how the different Zope projects fit together (Zope 2, Zope 3, Grok, CMF, ZODB). Each is then given a subfolder that contains a standard structure: A front page that explains the project in more detail, "Get" (downloads), "Taste" (as above, but for a particular project) and "Learn". The "Learn" section should contain relevant, up-to-date documentation.
No! Each project should have it's own site. Like Grok has today. The Projects page which explains what they are and how they fit together is fine, but the different subparts will necessarily have to be maintained by slightly different people with slightly different requirements. We can set up rules so that both zope.org/Projects/grok and grok.zope.org point to the same physical place, but it is extremely important that we do not, once again, try to make a monolithic zope.org. Microsites, microsites, microsites!
- "Foundation" links to the Foundation site for now. If the Foundation website maintainers want to move into this site in the future, they are of course more than welcome to.
See above.
Grok has its own home page, though I think we should keep referring to it where it makes sense.
Which is always. -- Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting. http://www.colliberty.com/ +33 661 58 14 64
Previously Lennart Regebro wrote:
On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 5:52 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
- "Projects" gives an explanation of how the different Zope projects fit together (Zope 2, Zope 3, Grok, CMF, ZODB). Each is then given a subfolder that contains a standard structure: A front page that explains the project in more detail, "Get" (downloads), "Taste" (as above, but for a particular project) and "Learn". The "Learn" section should contain relevant, up-to-date documentation.
No!
Each project should have it's own site. Like Grok has today. The Projects page which explains what they are and how they fit together is fine, but the different subparts will necessarily have to be maintained by slightly different people with slightly different requirements.
We can set up rules so that both zope.org/Projects/grok and grok.zope.org point to the same physical place, but it is extremely important that we do not, once again, try to make a monolithic zope.org.
Microsites, microsites, microsites!
I disagree. Very much. Note that we are not forcing everyone to use this new site; it is perfectly possible for projects to setup their own site. There are disadvantages to that that should be considered: you loose the consistency of a central site with a consistent structure, you loose the consistent image & styling and possibly make it harder for people to find something. For grok it does work since it has people actively making sure it has an excellent user experience. But where is the ZODB site? The Zope2 site? The Zope3 site? The CMF site? None of those have their own site (there are some user-unfriendly wikis but I would not call those sites) and we should not be asking them to make one. Wichert. -- Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> It is simple to make things. http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> wrote:
I disagree. Very much. Note that we are not forcing everyone to use this new site; it is perfectly possible for projects to setup their own site.
And in that case we end up with two sites, one on Zope.org, and it's own, as with Grok. That is very bad.
There are disadvantages to that that should be considered: you loose the consistency of a central site with a consistent structure, you loose the consistent image & styling and possibly make it harder for people to find something.
Nothing prevents us from having consistent styling and consistent structure between the different microsites, and also, having it all on zope.org doesn't mean that we have consistent structure either.
For grok it does work since it has people actively making sure it has an excellent user experience. But where is the ZODB site? The Zope2 site? The Zope3 site? The CMF site?
No. Is there a zope.org for these? No, not really. Microsites makes it possible to upgrade things one at a time, as necessary, instead of creating monumental zope.org upgrade projects that ultimately fail in creating a useful zope.org. We've already tried and failed twice. Lets learn from that experience.
None of those have their own site (there are some user-unfriendly wikis but I would not call those sites) and we should not be asking them to make one.
Why would this be a difference between microsites and not microsites? As far as I can see it doesn't affect who does it or what they do at all. -- Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting. http://www.colliberty.com/ +33 661 58 14 64
Lennart Regebro wrote:
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> wrote:
I disagree. Very much. Note that we are not forcing everyone to use this new site; it is perfectly possible for projects to setup their own site.
And in that case we end up with two sites, one on Zope.org, and it's own, as with Grok. That is very bad.
That's not the intention. zope.org has a "projects" section where we demonstrate the things that are "Zope-related". That's a pre-requisite for being able to answer "what is Zope". If we don't have this, we should ditch the idea of "Zope" altogether and each go our separate ways. In the cases where projects (like Grok) want to have their own websites, we only give a short overview and then point to a site with more information. In the cases where projects (like Zope 3, Zope 2, CMF and ZODB) don't have their own sites, we give them space to maintain some documentation and basic information.
No. Is there a zope.org for these? No, not really. Microsites makes it possible to upgrade things one at a time, as necessary, instead of creating monumental zope.org upgrade projects that ultimately fail in creating a useful zope.org. We've already tried and failed twice. Lets learn from that experience.
I'm not terribly worried about upgrades. At least not now. The new zope.org site runs a very plain Plone instance. It has one purpose: to present some content. I don't want it littered with weird stuff that is hard to migrate or update. The update and maintenance overhead for multiple separate sites with separate infrastructures is guaranteed to be greater than the infrastructure to maintain a single site.
None of those have their own site (there are some user-unfriendly wikis but I would not call those sites) and we should not be asking them to make one.
Why would this be a difference between microsites and not microsites? As far as I can see it doesn't affect who does it or what they do at all.
Let me give you a concrete example: Before this effort, apparently, four different people had some ZODB information they wanted to publish. All four of them are now adding content to zope.org/projects/zodb. None of them managed to get a website for the ZODB before. I don't blame them, getting a project like this off the ground is very painful. If these four people one day want to build a microsite, they will be more than welcome to, and we can link to it, like we do to grok.zope.org. Until they do, I'd rather have their content than put up more barriers to contribution. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 10:57 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude@gmx.net> wrote:
In the cases where projects (like Zope 3, Zope 2, CMF and ZODB) don't have their own sites, we give them space to maintain some documentation and basic information.
That story is better than the original formulation.
Exactly. Whch is very differnt from the previous idea of creating a fixed structure for all projects with documentation etc.
That was never the idea.
OK. It sounded like it.
I'm not terribly worried about upgrades. At least not now. The new zope.org site runs a very plain Plone instance. It has one purpose: to present some content. I don't want it littered with weird stuff that is hard to migrate or update.
It is true that the collector is no more, which helps. -- Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting. http://www.colliberty.com/ +33 661 58 14 64
Lennart Regebro a écrit :
Microsites, microsites, microsites!
If there are lots of people wanting to set up a bunch of microsites, I agree it would be better to have them. However, the site is needed for a long time and it's been six month since the new project started and we have just a design and a few paragraphs of contents. So let's just build a first nice zope.org with subfolders explaining the different projects because it's important to have just *something*. At least. If we take the ZODB as an example, I have started writing a small introductory text in the /projects/zodb page (and an image). The goal of this page is not to be the main place for zodb activity but just to introduce the zodb as a part of the zope project and how it can be used with zope. This does not prevent from having a zodb.zope.org site and linking to it... if someone ever begins to build one. Christophe
- "Foundation" links to the Foundation site for now. If the Foundation website maintainers want to move into this site in the future, they are of course more than welcome to.
See above.
Grok has its own home page, though I think we should keep referring to it where it makes sense.
Which is always.
Hi, On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:37:10AM +0200, Christophe Combelles wrote:
Lennart Regebro a écrit :
Microsites, microsites, microsites!
If there are lots of people wanting to set up a bunch of microsites, I agree it would be better to have them. However, the site is needed for a long time and it's been six month since the new project started and we have just a design and a few paragraphs of contents.
So let's just build a first nice zope.org with subfolders explaining the different projects because it's important to have just *something*. At least.
If we take the ZODB as an example, I have started writing a small introductory text in the /projects/zodb page (and an image). The goal of this page is not to be the main place for zodb activity but just to introduce the zodb as a part of the zope project and how it can be used with zope. This does not prevent from having a zodb.zope.org site and linking to it... if someone ever begins to build one.
I'd like to help out there. Can someone give me a login on that site? Christian -- gocept gmbh & co. kg - forsterstrasse 29 - 06112 halle (saale) - germany www.gocept.com - ct@gocept.com - phone +49 345 122 9889 7 - fax +49 345 122 9889 1 - zope and plone consulting and development
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Christophe Combelles <ccomb@free.fr> wrote:
So let's just build a first nice zope.org with subfolders explaining the different projects because it's important to have just *something*. At least.
Sure, that's fine. But that's just one page of explanation, which I also mentioned in my previous mail.
If we take the ZODB as an example, I have started writing a small introductory text in the /projects/zodb page (and an image). The goal of this page is not to be the main place for zodb activity but just to introduce the zodb as a part of the zope project and how it can be used with zope. This does not prevent from having a zodb.zope.org site and linking to it... if someone ever begins to build one.
Exactly. Whch is very differnt from the previous idea of creating a fixed structure for all projects with documentation etc. -- Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting. http://www.colliberty.com/ +33 661 58 14 64
Lennart Regebro wrote:
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Christophe Combelles <ccomb@free.fr> wrote:
So let's just build a first nice zope.org with subfolders explaining the different projects because it's important to have just *something*. At least.
Sure, that's fine. But that's just one page of explanation, which I also mentioned in my previous mail.
If we take the ZODB as an example, I have started writing a small introductory text in the /projects/zodb page (and an image). The goal of this page is not to be the main place for zodb activity but just to introduce the zodb as a part of the zope project and how it can be used with zope. This does not prevent from having a zodb.zope.org site and linking to it... if someone ever begins to build one.
Exactly. Whch is very differnt from the previous idea of creating a fixed structure for all projects with documentation etc.
That was never the idea. Each project gets its own space. Having some consistency there makes sense, but there's not going to be one "Documentation" section for all documentation and one "Downloads" section for all downloads. That doesn't make any sense. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 09:58:02PM +0100, Martin Aspeli wrote:
Lennart Regebro wrote:
On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Christophe Combelles <ccomb@free.fr> wrote:
So let's just build a first nice zope.org with subfolders explaining the different projects because it's important to have just *something*. At least.
Sure, that's fine. But that's just one page of explanation, which I also mentioned in my previous mail.
If we take the ZODB as an example, I have started writing a small introductory text in the /projects/zodb page (and an image). The goal of this page is not to be the main place for zodb activity but just to introduce the zodb as a part of the zope project and how it can be used with zope. This does not prevent from having a zodb.zope.org site and linking to it... if someone ever begins to build one.
Exactly. Whch is very differnt from the previous idea of creating a fixed structure for all projects with documentation etc.
That was never the idea.
Each project gets its own space. Having some consistency there makes sense, but there's not going to be one "Documentation" section for all documentation and one "Downloads" section for all downloads. That doesn't make any sense.
Nevertheless *I* find it nice to have the new zope.org have most of that stuff figured out already and lets me just go there and put in content for ZODB. And don't forget that this means that we can easier centrally authorize people to fix things there. From that perspective "unmanaged" microsites do contribute to our own "balkanization". Christian -- gocept gmbh & co. kg - forsterstrasse 29 - 06112 halle (saale) - germany www.gocept.com - ct@gocept.com - phone +49 345 122 9889 7 - fax +49 345 122 9889 1 - zope and plone consulting and development
participants (13)
-
Alexander Limi -
Chris Withers -
Christian Theune -
Christophe Combelles -
David Pratt -
Jens Vagelpohl -
Kent Tenney -
Lennart Regebro -
Maerteijn -
Martijn Faassen -
Martin Aspeli -
Paul Carduner -
Wichert Akkerman