Questions about Zope strategy
Hello, I just discovered Zope and I'm impressed with its potential. I am considering using Zope to create and manage a Web site for a smaller French human rights organization. You'll find below questions about Zope "strategy". I went over much of the Zope docs; now I'd like to have feedback from experienced Zope users so that I can build a strong case. - Context Creating and feeding the site will largely be carried out by voluntary workers (many Mac users, also Windows users). The site would probably run with Apache on a Linux box at a provider. Content creation for the site is almost finished. The site will contain about 400 HTML pages. It will be fairly text-intensive. We use a preprocessor; this would make it easier to prepare the pages when moving to Zope. - Setup This organization doesn't have a permanent Internet access. Site creation will be carried out locally on an NT box. However, site management and text update would need to be carried out over dial-up connections (33600 bps modem; 64000 ISDN connections at best) when the site is online. => Do you feel that the slow access could be a major problem? I'd expect people to enter smaller text changes online. When adding pages I think they could create the pages with a Wysiwyg editor (eg. DreamWeaver) and import them into the database later. I'd need to find some way to add the header and footer markers (in a template in the editor, maybe). When updating the pages they could export them to HTML, modify them locally and reimport them into the database later using Upload. => Is this OK? AFAIK it's not possible to export to HTML an existing page content without rendering it. I guess I'd need to create a Python script. - General database maintenance could be carried out by a couple of "techies" in the organization. However, text changes may also be carried out by people with little or no previous experience in HTML coding. We would train them but I'd like to keep things as simple as possible. In some cases I may use forms to guide text entry. - XML question: I've seen that add-on products are available to import XML into the database. Is it possible to store an XML file into a single document file and to render it to HTML? I suppose Python scripts are needed. - We may add other features later such as a restricted members area and a database link. That's it. If you see any glaring misconceptions I'd be really glad to hear about them. Thanks for your time. Alexandre
Alexandre Ratti wrote:
- Setup However, site management and text update would need to be carried out over dial-up connections (33600 bps modem; 64000 ISDN connections at best) when the site is online. => Do you feel that the slow access could be a major problem?
I'm building a site over a 33.6 modem and find it fairly quick. I do, however, prototype everything in a local copy of zope first.
I'd need to find some way to add the header and footer markers (in a template in the editor, maybe).
You don't necessarily need to do this: make the index_html in the root directory look something like this: <dtml-var standard_html_header> <dtml-var content> <dtml-var standard_html_footer> and then have content (a DTML method) in each subfolder contains only the content you want... if you need more documents, you might need to make multiple templates. (there may be a more elegant solution... anyone?)
When updating the pages they could export them to HTML, modify them locally and reimport them into the database later using Upload. => Is this OK? AFAIK it's not possible to export to HTML an existing page content without rendering it. I guess I'd need to create a Python script.
A few ways to do this: 1. go to the edit screen, copy-paste. 2. FTP in to zope and download the object. This has the added bonus of preserving the document type when you upload-*unless* your ftp client deletes the zope copy before uploading, which apparently Emacs and some other clients do. 3. 'export' the object, then import it into a local zope, vice versa for uploading.
- General database maintenance could be carried out by a couple of "techies" in the organization. However, text changes may also be carried out by people with little or no previous experience in HTML coding. We would train them but I'd like to keep things as simple as possible. In some cases I may use forms to guide text entry.
you can do this, but a content model like I suggested above, along with permissions set so only content objects can be modified, would allow text changes to be carried out on only the modifyable content. You can teach them <em> and <strong>, I imagine :-). With stylesheets, you can keep content consistent- H1 looks one way, etc. -- ~mindlace
participants (2)
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Alexandre Ratti -
Ethan Fremen