[Zope] Front door on the Zope web site (Was Re: [Zope] SmartWorker)

[Ethan Fremen]

Paul Everitt wrote:
> This is a very, very important thread to me.  I'm looking for two
> things:
> 
>   o What questions should the Zope.org home page, and pages
>     one click away, answer?

Well... I first heard about Zope because of Technocrat.net.  I heard
Bruce talk about how he liked Python better than Perl, which told me
nothing, frankly.

Then I went to the old Zope site, and it sorta blathered on about object
oriented things (I'm referring to the Zope Features, which is still on
the new site), which left me with the impression that zope was buzzword
compliant, but that's about it.

I went off for a while, and kept doing what I always did (hand-coded
HTML with cgi scripts thrown in.)  Then I started looking about for
something to handle a big project I was bidding for. I had practically
decided on PHP3, when I ran across the review of zope by Brian Lloyd at
devshed: http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/Zope/Intro/

(i just discovered it is linked from the zope info page)

Which finally got to the point... on the first page is a list of
_things_zope_can_do.  This was enough to sell me on the whole notion.

But what I really want when I'm making decisions is things I can do with
zope.  What sold me on PHP in the first place was the webmonkey
tutorials-
Which talked about the neat things- dynamic image generation and
threaded discussion were important in my book.

http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/databases/tutorials/tutorial4.html

>   o What are some effective ways to answer those questions?

Well, you'll note that on the PHP introduction, you're making php pages
by about the 5th line.

Things like Squishdot and KM|Net news should get higher billing than
being buried on the products page.  People want to see what they can do
with Zope, and what the community is doing.  I'm sure you'll push the
ever-elusive Portal Toolkit when it arrives, and that should happen too.

Make that spotlight change focus!  I'm sure digital garage is cool, but
they've been up there for months now, even across the site change.
There's got to be other people making Zope sites.

Give aquisition a higher billing- it's the feature that anybody would
start using immediately, it increases productivity hugely, and it's
different from any other appserver (that I know of).

Basically, a 10 cool things you can do with Zope would be great. 
Whenever I'm looking for a tool, I already more or less know what I want
to do.  All Zope has to do is let me know it can do it.

--
Ethan "mindlace" Fremen
you cannot abdicate responsibility
for your ideology.