[Zope] how to programmatically control zope?

hello, would someone please point me to the right direction? what is the preferred way to control a zope server programmatically? i need to be able to administer my zope instance from a script. add users, change permissions, create new sites, add objects to the sites. there is webdav, xml-rpc, what else? which one is the right way to do it? i am a newbie i hope this is not a frequent question, at least i did not find an answer in the documentation... thanks konstantin