[Zope] *Designing* Zope sites

[BZ]

Ok... so I will step up to the bat.... with what I have learned (and 
throw it into a how-to on Zope.org)

After building, maintaining and rebuilding over 10 sites with Zope of 
all different varieties here is some of what I have learned (in a pea 
pod shell)

- Get to know and love standard_html_header and standard_html_footer 
they will make your life much easier if you can decide what stuff to 
put in them and what stuff to leave out. Navigation is good, site 
table templates are good. Anything that is page specific is not so 
good.

- Do some things just the way you would with any old server. I still 
use /images/ for a place to put all my images and still reference 
them in html. I still name pages ".html", keep everything lowercase 
and use names for folders that make sense.

- I find that hosting more sites out of one Zope installation, 
leaving some dependencies on products is a much better way to go and 
much easier to maintain in the end.

- Use versions. They are easy, fun and powerful. You can play with a 
live site to your hearts content without ever breaking it.

- Use Zope products with a little caution. There are a ton of 
products that do a lot of things but not all of them are still 
supported nor have been tested with the newer releases of Zope. Look 
at date of the last distribution to see when they updated it. Also, 
if it is says beta, know that it probably is for a reason. Email the 
developer and ask.

- Spend extra time learning Zope security. If you don't it will bite 
you in the end (your end).

-


At 11:17 AM -0500 3/7/01, Joel Burton wrote:
>I've been learning about the workings of Zope: ZClasses, ZSQL methods,
>Python products, etc., and there are *lots* of resources about the APIs,
>and lots of products to add content to our sites.
>
>There is also lots of help on how to *set up* a Zope site: how to tie
>w/Apache, etc.
>
>What I haven't found yet, though, is much advice on how to *design* the
>Zope site:
>
>  . effective ways to use User Folders
>
>  . whether to make containing folders for like objects (eg book reviews),
>and collect these for lists with objectValues, or whether to add them
>under user folders/different contexts, and use ZCatalog searches to find
>them.
>
>  . how to handle printable pages throughout a site
>
>  . strategies for using ZSQL methods throughout a site
>
>and so on
>
>The Zope book tosses some nuggets of advice here and there, but doesn't
>build up a site, so we don't really get to see the workings of a talented
>Zope architect. Other documentation focuses on how to Do Things, like use
>SQL methods, or how to build products.
>
>I've had a little bit of time to look at the CMF, and that has some
>structure about reviewing, etc. (and seems to advocate the 'place things
>in user folders, use ZCatalog to find' method); however, I'm not designing
>something that seems so portal-ish, and this seems like a hegemonic
>solution to a design question.
>
>So:
>
>Am I missing any resources on fitting it all together?
>
>Are there 'example sites' that someone could describe?
>
>Would anyone with a well-designed site be willing to export it all up and
>post it somewhere, so we could explore it?
>
>Or are there other ways of starting this learning path?
>
>--
>Joel Burton   <jburton@scw.org>
>Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington
>
>
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