[Zope] newbie inquiry about zope

[Andy McKay]

[..]
My questions are:
1) Could Zope help me keep track of who is reading what and match people up
for discussion?
[..]
4) Could Zope handle right to left text and non-Latin character sets?

Think of it this way: Zope can do anything you can program in python.
Anything you cant program, have a look at Zope.org to see if somebody has
done it before.

5) What are the advantages/disadvantages to developing this site with Zope
as opposed to MySQL and PHP?

You can use MySQL as a relational database and it makes sense for large
amounts of content in certain formats.

6) Could Zope help me make the same content available to ordinary web
browsers and wireless devices in different formats?
7) Since we are going to be having discussion, we might want to stream voice
between users and also stream pre-recorded voice. Any support for that?

See my first answer.

8) Where can I find speed benchmark information about Zope?
9) Where can I find virtual server and collocation hosting for my site if I
want to use zope, or do I have to administrate my own server?