[Zope] Questions about Zope strategy

[Alexandre Ratti]

Hello, 


I just discovered Zope and I'm impressed with its potential. I am
considering using Zope to create and manage a Web site for a smaller French
human rights organization. 

You'll find below questions about Zope "strategy". I went over much of the
Zope docs; now I'd like to have feedback from experienced Zope users so
that I can build a strong case. 


- Context
Creating and feeding the site will largely be carried out by voluntary
workers (many Mac users, also Windows users). The site would probably run
with Apache on a Linux box at a provider. 

Content creation for the site is almost finished. The site will contain
about 400 HTML pages. It will be fairly text-intensive. We use a
preprocessor; this would make it easier to prepare the pages when moving to
Zope. 

- Setup
This organization doesn't have a permanent Internet access. Site creation
will be carried out locally on an NT box. However, site management and text
update would need to be carried out over dial-up connections (33600 bps
modem; 64000 ISDN connections at best) when the site is online.
=> Do you feel that the slow access could be a major problem?

I'd expect people to enter smaller text changes online. When adding pages I
think they could create the pages with a Wysiwyg editor (eg. DreamWeaver)
and import them into the database later. I'd need to find some way to add
the header and footer markers (in a template in the editor, maybe). 

When updating the pages they could export them to HTML, modify them locally
and reimport them into the database later using Upload. 
=> Is this OK? AFAIK it's not possible to export to HTML an existing page
content without rendering it. I guess I'd need to create a Python script. 

- General database maintenance could be carried out by a couple of
"techies" in the organization. However, text changes may also be carried
out by people with little or no previous experience in HTML coding. We
would train them but I'd like to keep things as simple as possible. In some
cases I may use forms to guide text entry.

- XML question: I've seen that add-on products are available to import XML
into the database. Is it possible to store an XML file into a single
document file and to render it to HTML? I suppose Python scripts are needed. 

- We may add other features later such as a restricted members area and a
database link. 


That's it. If you see any glaring misconceptions I'd be really glad to hear
about them. 

Thanks for your time. 

Alexandre