[Zope] An ex-virgin discusses his first big night with Zope

[Thomas]

Hi all,

I have been building my first project based off of Zope.  Basically, it is
an Article Store with an Interface built in for content folk to add and
edit new articles.

The other feature is a review function where users can rate each article
and give some room for them to provide some of their unique thoughts.  This
site is based in China, so we need to control/(and perhaps edit) these
reviews before publishing them live, and so the reviews first get checked
by the content team and then can be published.  (this review check is done
through the content interface).

I wanted to write a general review of Zope and my overall feelings to the
list.  My background: I have been coding static pages for some time and
recently (the past few months) have done very, very basic editing in Zope.
I know some basic Javascript and am starting to delve deeply into Python.
(as a result of Zope)  I have never solely owned a large project and in the
past have heavily relied on teammates to build Zope sites.  With the
completion of my project described above, I am no longer a Zope project
virgin.  

At first, I found Zope's dtml scripting deceptively simple.  I thought,
"oh, its just like html", but that illusion was shattered after getting a
little deeper.  At that stage, I was very frustrated and discouraged by my
slow progress.  I honestly thought I would never understand Zope.  I guess
this is the steep learning curve everyone talks about.

After hitting my head against my keyboard a few time, I decided upon
another strategy.  I went through all of the Zope Documentation files and
then started to go through all of the relevant how-to's  (mainly on
Zclasses, Aquisition, namespaces, Zcatalog, etc.)  Then I hit the list.  I
had been accumulating a very large box full of Zope mailings, but I never
went through them too seriously.  I went through about 1000 Zope postings
last week.  I have to thank this list for helping me out so much.
(indirectly albeit)  At that stage, I was ready to take on Zope again.

I have been at it for the past 8 days nonstop, and my project is almost
finished.  I am very pleased with my *quick* ability to pick up Zope.  My
advice to all the newbies out there... stick with it.  You will be proud of
yourself in the end but you need persistence.  I still have questions on
some tags and their behavior and Aquisition, but I feel confident enough
that I'll get a handle on them soon enough.

I have a few ideas which might help folks on the steep learning curve of Zope. 

1) Create an FAQ.  I think I have already posted questions on the list
which never got answered because clueless newbies asked them 100's of times
before.  I think the questions which hit this list often should be compiled
and put on the Zope site in the mailing lists section.  This would a) help
newbies out and b) sort out repetition from the List.  Question is: who
will do this?

2) Take apart a product or two.  I went through KMnetNews which helped me
out a lot.   Not only did it provide ideas in action of how Kevin built the
product, but it also helped to show me proper dtml syntax.

Just wanted to post my thoughts for the list and again thank everyone who
contributes.

Tom