[Zope] Web site newbie

[Loren Stafford]

From: "Montagne, Michael" <montagne@BOORA.com>


> I'm very excited about learning Python and Zope.  I'm a win98 user and
just
> today upgraded my service with my ISP to host my web page from home.

Congratulations on becoming an internet host provider.

I hope you have a firewall in front of your PC to help protect it from
attacks over the internet. Does your ISP help out there?

> So I  need a web server.

I hope you realize that win98, while an OK platform for prototyping a Zope
application, is not a sufficiently reliable platform for a professional
website. But, because Zope is largely platform independent, most things you
learn about it will be transferable when you decide to upgrade the
webserver's operating system.

> According to the docs, Zope comes with one.  If I use
> that one, am I going to be over my head initially?

The ZServer that comes with Zope is about as easy to install as Personal Web
Server. Go for it.

> Should I be using a
> different product if my site is not going to be super dynamic from the
> beginning?

A reasonably fast PC  has processor cycles to spare if all it is doing is
serving a small web site. Users won't even notice that pages are being
generated on the fly. If processor speed should ever become a limitation,
you will have several courses of action that do not involve changing your
Zope-based application (e.g. processor upgrade, front-end cache).

> If I use Personal Web Server, can Zope be integrated later?

I don't think so (but I'm not positive). Still, if you need a regular web
server, use the Windows version of Apache. It will be a little more
complicated to install and maintain, but you'll be learning an
industry-standard program. Subscribe to an Apache mailing list, if you need
help managing it on your PC. If you don't need a regular web server (for
serving files outside of Zope), stick with the built-in ZServer.

> Can
> I use Web authoring software such as Front Page 2000 and publish to
Zserver?

Yes (with limitations that you can read about by searching the archives of
this mailing list), but you may find that you no longer want or need to.
Usually 90% of the complex HTML in a web site is in the framing of the
content -- i.e. the headers, footers, and navigation. This kind of repetive
and/or computed HTML is the kind the you will program Zope to gather in one
place, and reuse for all requests. The individual content of each page very
often uses the simple sort of HTML that you can either code by hand or
create in simple HTML-aware editors.

>
> thanks so much,
> -mjm
>

-- Hope that helps
-- Loren