[Zope-CMF] Re: Customising the CMF

[Tres Seaver]

ben.j.dawson at gsk.com wrote:

> I'm a complete newbie to Zope and CMF, so please bear with me...
> 
> I'm trying to design a content management site as part of a work project 
> which can be used by my colleagues to collaborate with each other and to 
> share documents over our Intranet site.
> 
> I'm planning on using the CMF and customising it so that it suits our 
> needs and so far I've been very impressed with what it has to offer.
> 
> As part of the design, I need to give all users access to a global folder 
> and also enable individual users to grant access to their own folders and 
> documents to other users of their choice.

That functionality is already in the default CMF:  see the "Local roles" 
action of any folder.

> I also need to add all kinds of 
> other functionality to it, such as making the system send an email to 
> certain people when a user adds a document to the site

Investigate DCWorkflow, which allows you to do arbitrary actions during 
"tranisitions" in the workflow state graph.

> as well as having  several forums.

There are a number of add on products for doing forums within the CMF.

> Is this going to be a possibility with the CMF?

Yes, definitely.

> Could anyone point me in 
> the direction of documentation that explains how I can customise the CMF 
> to our needs? I've read ZWACK chapter 5 at the CMF Dogbowl which is good, 
> but doesn't really go into enough detail for what I require. I've never 
> touched DTML or Python before, but I'm assuming it would be important to 
> learn these?

I would recommend learning Zope Page Templates in place of DTML;  ZPT 
has replaced DTML for almost all "current" web page templating.  You are 
definitely well off knowing Python as well.

> Any pointers would be appreciated. Cheers,

Tres.
-- 
===============================================================
Tres Seaver                                tseaver at zope.com
Zope Corporation      "Zope Dealers"       http://www.zope.com