[Zope] planning new site, Zope questions

[Martijn Pieters]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 04:20:49PM +0100, Henk Schets wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> we're planning a major update of our site and we are considering using Zope
> for it.  However, I still have some questions left :
> (Note : we are absolute beginners in Zope)
> - we have no experience in developing with Python, is it easy to adopt this
> language ?

Python is the easiest language I ever learned. 

Any experienced programmer caqn pick up the python.org tutorial and become
comfortable with Python in a weekend. For less exerienced programmers
there are a host of good books introducing Python.

> - for the site content, we have non-professional writers (they don't
> even know html).  So we will need a simple to use content management system.
> I understand, the management screens are suiteable.  Is there some way to
> customize these for super-inexperienced people ?

Anything the management interface can do, you can let your own objects do.
So, you can build your own interface.

An alternaive would be the CMF, or Content Management Framework; all the
hard work is already done. See:

  http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK 

Yes, the URL ends in 'PTK' (Portal ToolKit), because that is the old name
for the project; we are in the process of renaming it.

> - the site will need a good search engine.  Since we will be putting all of
> our articles in a separate database, is it still possible to use ZCatalog ?

I believe that it is theoretically possible to use the ZCatalog to index
external database data, I wouldn't be able to tell you how to do this.
Other on this list may, though.

Is the decision to store externally set in stone? Or can you still
reconsider? If you are going to use the CMF, it may turn out that storing
in the ZODB is a better alternative. Zope.org has HowTos that help you
make the decision.

> - how easy is it to maintain an Enhydra based website ?  Generally and
> technically speaking ofcourse, I understand this has a lot to do with
> the complexity of it.

I never used Enhydra, so I can't speak for that.

However, I believe that Enhydra has no management interface whatsoever;
this would mean you'd have to start from scratch with the content
management interface.

> - could you point me to some 'large' sites using Zope ?  I have to convince
> some people ;-)

To name a few:

- http://www.trouble.co.uk/

  - on average 1.2 million hits a day.

- http://www.cbsnewyork.com/

- http://cybercentre.greenpeace.org/t/s/

  - normally linked from the homepage and framed. This is the
    Cyberactivist Community server of Greenpeace.

-- 
Martijn Pieters
| Software Engineer  mailto:mj@digicool.com
| Digital Creations  http://www.digicool.com/
| Creators of Zope   http://www.zope.org/
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