[Zope] Does Zope support user authentication, sessions, etc?

[J. Atwood]

>From the specifications given, my first thought is to implement it in
>object-oriented way of programming. Zope (being open-source and OOP
>from ground-up) naturally came to mind. Therefore, i would like to know
>whether Zope is suitable (and stable enough) to develop this kind of
>websites, bearing in mind other criteria such as scalability, performance,
>and the "learning curve" involved.

Yes. Yes and steep. (scalability = ZEO, performance is good, learning 
curve a bit steep)

>I have done programming in PHP before, and AFAIK to implement features such
>as user-authentication, sessions and permissions in PHP, we can either write
>our own libraries, or use PHPLIB. However, looking at PHPLIB, it seems to
>be quite buggy, and require a lot of work re-writing for some of its
>functions.
>Therefore, I would also like to know whether there's any
>authentication/session
>management modules(or classes) already written for Zope, and if they exist,
>is
>it easy to implement them(as in as easy as plug-and play, or a lot of coding
>required)?

Zope has its own authentication/session management built in. You will 
see this when you set up your first Zope and go to manage something. 
There are a few products out there that let you create better 
login/user management as well as some that you can connect to SQL 
databases or LDAP. A new product in the works it the PTK (Portal Tool 
Kit) that will have a lot of this built into it.

My suggestion: Start poking around Zope.org, read up on the stuff 
there and download and install Zope. That will give you a better idea 
of what you are dealing with.

J