[BlueBream] ZTFY Strategy, Demo, Install Script, Review, Recommendation, and request for help.

[Christopher Lozinski]

I was thinking about the various TTW demos we could build on BlueBream,
and the one that makes the most sense to me is a simple Content
Management System.  If we had one, it would be very easy for a
number of Plone developers who are early adopters to migrate over to
BlueBream. 

And of course that is what ZTFY is.  It allows you to create an account,
add content types into the account, and have them show up in the folder
for that content type.  On the ztfy.org website, you can see the
page/folder with all the news items.  Perfect.

Sure I want a TTW development environment, but give me a simple content
management system, I can add in Acquisition, python scripts, and DTML,
and I am a happy man.   My needs are not the mass market needs, the mass
market wants a content management system.  Fair enough.

So I went ahead and installed ZTFY.  I invite you to log in and check it out

http://ejr0.x.rootbsd.net:8081/++skin++ZMI/@@login.html

username:admin
password:admin

I will leave it up for a day or two, if you want access later, please
ask me.

Here is the install directions, mostly written by Thiery with a few
changes by me.

 - check the requirements, at least concerning required compiler
   and libraries !
   => http://www.ztfy.org/installation/pre-requis/pre-requis.html

   What I had to do is to install Python 2.6.7  With the earlier release of the compiler, 
   I was getting a missing parts message.   Just the default install worked great. 

   wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.7/Python-2.6.7.tgz
   gunzip *.tgz
   tar -xvf *.tar
   cd Python-2.6.7
   ./configure
   make install

 - install python-2.6 with setuptools
 - easy_install-2.6 ztfy.webapp
 - paster create -t ztfy.webapp myproject
 - cd myproject
 - python2.6 bootstrap.py
 - ./bin/buildout
 - ./bin/paster serve debug.ini
 - then go to http://localhost:8080/++skin++ZMI/@@login.html => connect
   (actually twice !!) with admin/admin
 - go to the "Add" menu in left column's "Console"
 - select "ZTFY site manager" with the name you want, and click "Add"
   button
 - select the new site
 - click on the "Make a site" link

After that, you should have a new shining (but empty !) site. So select
the site in the top breadcrumbs, go to "Properties" menu to define
site's title and shortname. After that you should be able to add
sections, blogs and topics.


What do I think of it?  Well I have not yet looked at it that closely, I
wanted to show it to others.  First blush it  looks good to me.  I can
go ahead and make a site, add some folders, add some content types. 

I swore I saw python scripts in the install scripts but, not through the
user interface.  Can't be that hard to add.

It still has a bunch of ZCA stuff exposed to the end user. 
Registration, that should be hidden. 
The treeview, properties and Categories links have some bug.  That will
get fixed quickly. Maybe I am doing something wrong.   Thierie's Tech
support has been just brilliant.  It is a huge plus for me. 

What is my recommendation.  Well log in and take a look at it.  We need
to fix those three broken links.  But as soon as that is done, let us
make it into the BlueBream Demo app.  Much more interesting than the
current almost-no demo bluebream.  It will attract the Plone developers
like crazy.  It will make BlueBream download page up to date.  It looks
like a good basis for what I need to do.  And hugely important to me,
and others, is there is someone who does a great job answering questions
quickly.

Some of the menu options disappear in certain windows.  I think
Acquisition is needed to inherit the menus.  I could be wrong. 

Anyhow I will be taking a much closer look at the software tomorrow.  I
just wanted to publish this email as soon as possible, so that others
could take a closer look.

And of course it needs a huge bunch of documentation.  I have found that
a great way to understand software is to document it.  Open Source
software often needs people to help with docs.  It is something even
non-developers can contribute to if they want to.    

Thanks Thierry for all the hard work.

-- 
Regards
Christopher Lozinski

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