"Henk Schets" <henk@poppunt.be> wrote:

Hi,

we're planning a major update of our site and we are considering using Zope for it. However, I still have some questions left : (Note : we are absolute beginners in Zope)

- we have no experience in developing with Python, is it easy to adopt this language ?

Given reasonable experience with some other Algol-derived imperative language, Python is about as easy a second language as I can think of.

- for the site content, we have non-professional writers (they don't even know html). So we will need a simple to use content management system.

Please check out the Content Management Framework (formerly the "Portal Toolkit"), which is designed to make creating community generated content sites as easy as possible: http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK (moving soon to its own host)

I understand, the management screens are suiteable. Is there some way to customize these for super-inexperienced people ?

The current version of the CMF is designed to allow through-the-web customization of the default "skin" (which is delivered from the filesystem). We are scheduled to release version 1.0 of the CMF this month; one of the TODO's before then is to move the last "hard-coded" UI into the skins, so that it can be customized / internationalized.

- the site will need a good search engine. Since we will be putting all of our articles in a separate database, is it still possible to use ZCatalog ?

It is possible to store content outside the ZODB (typically storing or replicating the metadata in the catalog). You will have to "roll your own" content objects, typically, to make this happen.

- how easy is it to maintain an Enhydra based website? Generally and technically speaking ofcourse, I understand this has a lot to do with the complexity of it.

Enhydra is built around Java servlet technology; if your staff is already comfortable with servlets, then Enhydra might be a workable choice. Tres. -- =============================================================== Tres Seaver tseaver@digicool.com Digital Creations "Zope Dealers" http://www.zope.org