[Zope] Re. Advice for new zope installation

[Spicklemire, Jerry]

Henk Schets wonders:

>    - how easy and reliably can I manage my virtual hosts (about 8 sites
right now) ? Very important.

The SiteAccess product contributed by Evan Simpson is a popular solution.

	http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/SiteAccess2


>    - how stable is Zope regarding to Apache on Linux ?

That's how "the Zope Folks" at Digital Creations run Zope, so I'd guess 
it's about a clean as can be. However, there is more than one approach. 

Probably the easiest is ZAP, which comes with a preconfigured Apache.

	http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/Products/Zap

Start here:

	http://www.zope.org/Members/guy_davis/install_routes

Below is the tip of the iceberg from a search on "apache", at Zope.org

	http://www.zope.org/Members/shaw/HowTo/ApacheFrontEnd

	http://www.zope.org/Members/nemeth/howtos/zopeandapacherh61

	http://www.zope.org/Members/anser/apache_zserver

	http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/HowTos/ApacheRewriting

	http://www.zope.org/Members/kedai/apache_zope_fcgi


>    - we have a MySql database, is it easy to connect with Zope ?

Lot's of folks use MySQL with Zope, and there's a ready made "DA" 
(database adapter) just for this purpose.

	http://www.zope.org/Members/mordred/ZMySQLDA


>    - can I access the Zope internal database with e.g. ODBC ?

So far, no. New and interesting ways of storing Zope Objects are being 
developed though, so let's not count this one out.


    - can I use log analyzers to get some statistics about our site ?

Zope does do some logging, but I don't know much about that. 
Maybe someone could answer?


>    - any advice about migrating an existing site ?

One handy item that I have used is Jonathan Farr's LocalFS. This way 
you can keep serving static pages and images "directly" from a local 
file system, and frees you to decide when the time is right to turn 
all those icons into Zope Objects.

	http://www.zope.org/Members/jfarr/Products/LocalFS

Also, leverage your MySQL for all its worth. The more stuff you can 
abstract into tables and treat as lists, the more you'll like Zope!

Later,
Jerry S.