[Zope] Zope Good/Bad News Article

[Philippe J]

Some tips that could be implemented in a few days/weeks on the zope website:

[sorry if those are a bit "rude", but I feel that some little things would
make the zope site even better, and since some of those are very simple
things, I don't see any other option than applying them now ;-) ]

- have a longer description of search results. Those are +- 25 chars long,
it's a strange idea to have only the beginning of the title. A short
description should be included. If a document has a "description" property,
include it under the title link. Each memeber of the site should be
encouraged to include a "description" property to his objects.

- have a 1-10 rating for products, and gives the ability to rate products
(eventually with comments). Give the opportunity to sort the products based
on rating. Display the category of each product in the product list. Each
object on the website should be rate-able. Any visitor should be able to
rate any object on the site. The search engine should use this information.

- Create a product documentation framework. A simple text file with all the
titles would be sufficient. Even better, in the member area, add another
type of product : "documentation", with all the properties ready to be
filled up. Authors are lazy, because they do it for free, so let's help them
(us).

- Create a product repository separated from the members page. It's strange
to have products stored on the members page. A product has nothing to do
with a member beside the fact that he is the author. No one search a product
based on author.
There is something strange : the product area already
exists, but it contains the information to download zope itself. Products
are listed at the bottom of the page. I'm not sure everyone sees them.
Separate the main zope downloads and the products downloads. Microsoft
doesn't mix windows and office pages after all...

- Give something better than the empty member page (see :
http://www.zope.org/Members ). With zope's wonderfull versions, it should be
easy to keep "the maintenance" outside the live website. Maintenance pages
should never exist on a zope powered site. Give at least a listing of all
the members. It's 3 lines of dtml. Or did I miss something?

- and if something doesn't work, at least you'll have tried...

I firmly believe that zope is powerfull enough now. What I (as a
semi-newbie) need for now is:

- documentation
- tutorials

...and a very good website. As a newbie, when I come to the zope website,
It's bit like when I first tried zope : it looked powerfull, but some of the
features were hard to find.

Anyway, let me say that zope is the best thing that hapened to my computer
since well... hum... since... since a very long time anyway !

Philippe

> Have you looked at the Zope Directions document recently
> posted on dev.zope.org?
>
> http://dev.zope.org/Resources/ZopeDirections.html
>
> Dramatically lowering the bar for developers to create quality
> components is our number one priority going forward. It will
> be evolutionary and not happen all at once, but it will be
> happening.
>