[Zope] Newbie questions and discussion

[Gary Wong]

Hi all,

I've just discovered Zope and have successfully installed it on WinNT platform.  I've played with it, and had successfully created a searchable job board system and other quick and dirty tasks by using the great HOWTO articles submitted by Zope users.  However, I still have some issues that perhaps you guys can help me with:

1)  Our designers are big Dreamweaver fans.  How would we use it in conjunction with Zope?  I know there is a current thread about this.   Perhaps some users can shed some light on how to use third party web publishing/design/layout tools such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage (God forbid), Allair Homesite, etc, with Zope.  Many of these tools have their own way of managing websites.  Does this mean we have to "disable/ignore" these features, and just treat Dreamweaver/Frontpage/etc as a layout and design tool, and thus not benefit from the "libraries" or "template" functions?

2)  I am bidding for a project that I think will be PERFECT for Zope (diehard Zope users will probably say that every project is Zopeable!) It is an intranet site that has areas where users can log in, read articles and news for the department they are in, and also submit news and articles as well.  Now, the hard part is that not only do I need to promote my company and sell them on our skills, we need to sell them on the idea of using Zope.  Can someone suggest some highlights of Zope that will make a non-technical reader of this proposal go goo-goo over Zope?  All the stuff I've read on why Zope is great is mostly technical in nature (OO based, Extensible, blah blah blah geek talk).  Anyone know of a place that describes the benefits of Zope from a high-level, "Zope for dummies" language?  If we come up with some Marketing spiff on this list and share it, then everyone on the list who develops with Zope and bid for jobs can benefit from it.

3)  Here's a more technical question.  I use Oreilly Website Pro (WSP) to host my sites using virtual servers.  I know I can "front end" Zope with WSP by using pzope.cgi.  I am still looking into how to do this correctly, since WSP may not be passing authentication information.  Anyone done this already with WSP?  

4)  How do I manage multiple projects/websites with Zope?  Do I need a new instance of Zope running for each site?  Or, do I just make folders for each project and start them from there?  If I do this, then how do I set up my virtual servers?  I wouldn't want each of my site's home page to have to be:  http://www.clientsite.com/clientsite/  (Where clientsite would be the folder in zope).  In Apache there is rewrite rules, but not WSP.  Any hints?

Thanks for any input!
Gary Wong

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Gary Wong   gary.wong@spingroup.com
The Spin Group, Inc.
2000 S. 4th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53204
p.414-672-8888 f.414-672-8183