[ZWeb] Not another ___Nuke site, please

[Jeffrey P Shell]

On Monday, January 13, 2003, at 09:55  AM, Ausum Studio wrote:

> Wow! What a busy weekend. Although many statements have already been
> discussed, I just want to contribute with my two cents, as a member of 
> the
> community commited to Zope and nzo (with ideas and time), and who 
> firmly
> believes that "the world of Zope content is only as good as Zope.org"
> (quoting Paul). Of course I'm not among the just-feature-requesters 
> because
> inspired by the winds of last year efforts for nzo, I've been writing 
> code
> in the sense of my suggestions. You can find info about them at the 
> bottom
> of this message. Cut to the chase:
>
> The role of Zope.org
>
> Let's face it. We are competing with all sort of CMS systems out there.
> Many people believe like us that we are leading the OS content 
> management
> game, but unfortunately the 'loosers' are getting the fans. Why is 
> that?
> One possible reason is that czo isn't contributing to give people the 
> image
> that we have in mind when we think about Zope. Zope IS "the swiss army
> knife of the web", but czo is saying it's less than any 'nukish' 
> community
> system. (Please remember I'm talking about outsiders' subjective
> impressions).
> So, given the chance to upgrade it, why to conform ourselves with the
> weblogish style? Why to resemble the accomplishments of PHPNuke, or
> PostNuke or AnythingNuke? Do we really need Zope to look like it was 
> just
> another nukish site? I say no way.

I say no way also - mostly because those sites, like the *dots are a 
confusing mass of sprawling links and little information.  But there 
are good weblogish styles out there as well.

> What nzo could have in the context of the work already done and the
> timeframe we don't have
>
> I say Personalization. Let's make it all personal that it could be. We 
> know
> Zope delivers fine in this subject and IMHO we need to make nzo more
> personalizable than SF is claiming to be. Do I really  need to download
> (and store) products that are less sized than the mean overall size of 
> the
> pages I'm browsing at?  Isn't it better that nzo remembers what I've
> already 'downloaded', so that I don't need to fill my local file system
> with dozens of tiny files?
> Do I really need to open the whole ring of Zope sites to get to know 
> what's
> going on with the community? Isn't it better to make nzo to show me
> relevant external content by means of advanced syndication?  If I was a
> seasoned Zope developer, do I really need to see the "Zope is this",
> "Download Zope here"  pieces of content, every time I open nzo?

Yes.  Should you have to log in every time you open NZO just to avoid a 
"Download Zope Here" piece of content?  Personalization is not worth 
it, unless it's basically a way of allowing you to track product 
releases that are of interest to you.  But at this point, we start 
getting into the large-volume-of-user-data issue again.  I'd like to 
keep that issue at bay for as long as possible in hopes that it will 
make NZO easier to migrate to Zope 3.

I again say: look at <http://www.php.net/>.  Downloads, Documentation, 
Links, Resources, etc.  I think it's much better that we help new users 
and curious visitors answer the questions "what is Zope?", "how do I 
use it?", and "where can I get more help?" than that we hide such 
information from people who know the answers to those questions.

Finally - you shouldn't have to log in in order to use the site, and 
the site shouldn't go through dramatic changes when you do log in.  And 
personalization shouldn't happen based on browser identification, 
because you shouldn't have a different Zope.org experience if you're at 
home or at work or at a coffee shop.

> Zope has largely sold the concept "develop faster". I'd like to add the
> concept "move faster throughout your site". DHTML menus has been out 
> there
> for a long while but they really haven't been seized in the way a 
> content
> management system would require. So at least a basic level of 
> navigation
> facilitator menus-based is also a must, in my opinion.

If a site is simple and effectively well organized, you should be able 
to move through it quickly without needing DHTML menus.  They're a nice 
bonus, but they shouldn't be necessary.

> To Plone or not to Plone
>
> -1 to Plone. This is out of the scope of this message but you can read 
> my
> statement on the subject as a reply to the following thread:
> http://www.zopezen.org/Members/huima/News_Item.2002-11-19.0150

I've made some comments here before.  Plone, like the CMFDefault, 
doesn't have to *look* like Plone.  Plone rounds out some of the CMF's 
potential by filling in holes (that are intentionally left open, 
thankfully for those of us who have to build other types of content 
sites that are not community oriented) and providing extra services 
that the base CMF implementation doesn't provide.

<http://www.zope.ch/> says it is powered by Plone, but I think it's a 
much better looking site than most Plone sites tend to look.  I'm not 
sure if it switches skins to look more Plone-ish for those who prepare 
the content, but the public side looks nice.  ZopeZen is a similar 
story - it looks somewhat Plone-ish, but not too much.  And ZopeZen is 
more than just some replaced page-templates in the skins layer, it adds 
and modifies some policies and services to better fit the type of site 
that ZopeZen wants to be.  (I'm not saying Plone is ugly, but it 
certainly doesn't fit all situations).