[Zope-PTK] Assessing Zope PTK

Andrew Sawyers andrew@digicool.com
Mon, 19 Feb 2001 12:09:44 -0500


Tom,


>hi,
>i'm currently trying to assess whether or not to use Zope PTK for one of
>the sites we host. I have a few questions i hope someone may be able to
>answer.

>Q1. I have created a new portal which looks fine, however I is it
>possible to completly customize the look and feel of the portal or do i
>have to stick with the Zope logo and colour scheme?

You can customize all of the look and feel of the portal quite easily.  For
quick introduction, see http://www.zope.org/Members/ensane/PTK2CMF/  -- I
touch on the customizing lightly in this how-to.  We will have more detailed
documentation on the skinning process very soon.

>Q2. I've been looking at my Portal site in Explorer and Navigator, and
>while it looks nice in Explorer, it doesn't look too good in Navigator -
>what kind of browser support does it have?
It supports the use of CSS quite heavily, which isn't supported very well in
Netscape.  We've made quite effort to get it looking good in both IE and
Netscape, but simply put, IE does a better job of handling CSS then does
Netscape.  In your customizing efforts, you can utilize designs which do not
have as much discrepencies between browsers as our canned versions now do.
If you have any ideas on how we can improve our skins, we'd surely
appreciate the input.

>Q3. The 'add Portal Image' and 'add Portal Folder' options are not
>working on my setup of Zope.
Can you send more details on this, what version of the CMF (PTK) are you
running, tracebacks, error message, etc.

>Q4. In your opinion is the PTK ready to be used on a major site as a
>remote content management system?
We think we have provided the groundwork for a robust, extensible CMS which
can be built or used out of the box.  Paul has noted the goals in the
product in a previous thread over the past couple days which clearly states
where we feel the product currently is envisioned.  In my experience to
date, I personally feel it's ready to begin being used, and extended where
customizations are needed. With the recent changes and our movement to the
new CMF, upgrading to new product releases will not be painful and
cumbersome, thus the fear of compatibilities between future releases and
breaking existing implementations will be lessened and allow you to continue
to take advantage of your customizations as well as our continued extending
feature components of the product.

>thanks for all your help,
>Tom.

Hope this helps you make a decision,
Andrew Sawyers