[Zope] The Honest Scoop on Zope

[Brian Salisbury]

Hello List,

I've been kicking around the idea behind Zope for quite a while.  There
are a some questions I have about it.  These are things I consider
important to publishing on the web.

Is Zope scalable?  Will Zope be able to support me if my site suddenly
becomes popular and I've got to go out buy one of those huge web server
machines?

Is Zope reliable?  I come from windows world, so anything that runs more
than 30% of the time generally please me; but, what's serving my web
documents and collaboration system has to be extremely reliable.

Is it easy to learn?  I have virtually *no* programming experience.
Everything I've done to this point has consisted of guess-editing
pre-cooked Perl CGI scripts.  I don't know where to begin learning Zope
and, obviously Python, since it goes with Zope.  Do you remember what it
was like to think of having to 'Program' and getting the shivers?
That's me.  I've never even looked at source code.  I think I compiled
some stuff once ;).  Most of my web publishing, to this point, has
consisted of serving mostly static web files with SSI, and CGI files for
interactive stuff.

My knowledge is getting fuzzy here.  Does Zope directly interact with
things such as a Database?  I wouldn't want it having to call a process
every time a message board action is requested.

How endless are the possibilities?  In the Web Server/RDBMS world, one
just has to program a script to call the DB to do whatever they need it
to do.  I wouldn't want to have a great idea for my new site, then find
out Zope, which I invested all of my time in money in, isn't able to
accomplish x-task.

Is everything in Zope stored in a (I'm guessing) Object Database?  I
installed Zope on Windows 98 to poke around.  (I tried to install it on
my dedicated server, of which I don't have root access, with no
success).  It doesn't look like anything is stored in a physical file
system.  I see two potential problems with this.  First, I would think
it hard to transfer an existing site to Zope.  Plus, wouldn't it be very
difficult to convert your Zope site to X-Platform should I have the need
to at some point in the future?  I don't want to paint myself into a
corner.

Let say I wanted to have someone manage the technical aspects of my
Server(s).  How hard it would be to have someone maintain Linux, its
connection, and Zope?  Could I have someone I could call on to write in
custom scripts to accomplish what I need in Zope?  What kind of expenses
would something like this incur in a Linux OS environment?  I would like
to know how everything works, but I'm afraid I can't do it all by
myself.  On the same token, I'm not a Fortune 500 company who has money
burn.

These are generally my biggest concerns.  Right now, I'm trying learn to
Linux, Networking, and how I can more efficiently run a web site.  I'm
considering buying a PC that strictly runs Linux so I can have it there
full time for experimental/learing purposes.  Now pile on top of this
the facts that I have returned to school with a full-time schedule, and
I'm still maintaining my current site.  That means I don't have hours
everyday to play around with Linux and Zope.

I'd really appreciate any insight you have.  If I may say so, it really
impresses me what so many folks collaborating together can accomplish.
You really are defining the future.

Thanks,

Brian Salisbury