[Zope] Does Zope stack up as a portal?

[Paul Browning]

--On 15 December 2002 12:48 -0500 Kyler Laird 
<kyler-dated-1040578352.848fde@lairds.org> wrote:

> This is going to be a horribly-formed request, but I'm looking for some
> guidance on evaluating a product being pitched.  The product is UNICON
> Academus.
> 	http://www.unicon.net/academus/products/overview.html
>
> It's based on uPortal
> 	http://mis105.mis.udel.edu/ja-sig/uportal/
> a "free, sharable portal under development by institutions of higher-
> education."  UNICON's offerings appear to be closed and, at least for
> the authoring tool, MS Windows-only.
>
> I want Free tools.  uPortal is better than something like Blackboard,
> but it still has some severe limitations due to its licensing.

Whoa. Don't confuse UNICON (about which I know precious little)
and uPortal (about which I know a bit). Have you read the uPortal
license?

<http://mis105.mis.udel.edu/ja-sig/uportal/license.html>

I don't see any cause for concern there.

> I'm
> wondering if I can confidently say that Zope can readily perform the
> same functions.

I think you can get a powerful framework like Zope +/- CMF to do
reproduce uPortal. But you'd have to write the code first. There
are some interesting developments like CMFPortlets

<http://www.zope.org/Members/ausum/CMFPortlets>

which show what is possible but they have some way to go to
match uPortal.

The University of Bristol wrestled with this question for
a while - and then jumped both ways (uPortal for portal
framework, Zope for CM framework). You can read more at:

<http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/projects/portal/portalbytes>

Paul

>
> I like using Zope for most everything these days, but every time I go
> to battle against CMF, I come away ready to continue using other
> methods for awhile.  I suspect that CMF is what I would need to use to
> get uPortal/Academus-type functionality without starting from scratch.
>
> So...any opinions?  I'm looking for comments like "Zope can't touch
> Academus without a *lot* of work" or "Oh, yeah, just fight through CMF
> and you're almost there."  Specifics would be great, but I'll be happy
> just to get some insight.  (If there's something besides CMF that can
> handle this role, I'll be especially interested.)
>
> Of course, I'd also be happy to receive offers to provide Academus-like
> functionality in Zope using Free software for a price on the order of
> that of Academus.  (I don't know how much they charge yet, but I will
> soon.)
>
> Thank you.
>
> --kyler
>
>
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--
 The Library, Tyndall Avenue, Univ. of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TJ, UK
   E-mail: paul.browning@bristol.ac.uk  URL: http://www.bris.ac.uk/