[Zope] Re: Zope site testimonials needed

[Luciano Ramalho]

We have just finished implementing a news publishing system for "IDG Now!"
(http://www.idgnow.com.br), the Brazilian tech news web site of IDG
(http://www.idg.net). It is the most popular web site of its kind in
Brazil, and Brazil was the 6th largest IT market in the world in 1997.

Thanks to the exceptional design of Zope, whenever the project presented us
with a new challenge we very often found that the solution was trivial. It
is obvious that the DigiCool people have already faced most of the problems
web developers might encounter, and implemented their solutions in Zope. In
a few cases we resorted to External Methods, mainly to encapsulate long
sequences of DTML which had complicated logic and would be used repeatedly.

Also, because it was so easy to re-use solutions from one part of the site
to another, we actually managed to deliver several modules one week BEFORE
the deadline, so since April 8th all editors were already using our system
to publish their stories. During the week before the April 15th deadline we
made minor adjustments responding to user feedback, and implemented a few
features not in the original requirements. All of that was very easy too.
Since yesterday the last module is fully operational.

Because of special circunstances which we cannot discuss, it was a
requirement that the system used no server-side applications (IDG Now! is
currently hosted at the largest content provider in Brazil, UOL
http://www.uol.com.br; the site runs from a very large Sun machine which
hosts hundreds of other sites). So the Zope application runs inside IDG's
intranet in São Paulo. The pages are exported to the file system before
being sent via FTP to UOL. SSI is used in the public Web server in order to
support a very dynamic side-bar and footer which contain links to other
stories. The include files are also generated automatically by the Zope
application. About 40 new pages are generated daily. 

Our first professional experience with Zope was a pleasure and a success
with the users. We are now looking forward to an oportunity to put Zope to
full use, running on a public server. 

I (Luciano) have been developing high-profile web-sites since the early
days of the Web in Brazil (1994). I've had the opportunity to work with
high-end products such as NetDynamics, Silverstream and the deceased
Netscape Publishing System. None of them comes near Zope in supporting
web-sites which are a mixture of structured and unstructured content (most
are exactly that). With Zope you get to choose the level of automation to
implement in different parts of the site, taking into account the frequency
of updates, the skill level of the people responsible for updtating and the
complexity of the updates. This allows you to provide your customer with a
highly cost-effective solution.

Finally, we would like to take this oportunity to extend our most sincere
compliments and thanks to the people at DigiCool, who have developed a
fantastic tool and are now allowing us to share in using it and further
developing it. It is very exciting to be part of the Zope community.

[ ]s
Luciano Ramalho and Jose Octavio

Hiperlogica Solucoes Internet
Sao Paulo, Brazil