[Zope] Newbie Questions

[Paul Winkler]

On Sat, Feb 02, 2002 at 06:15:03PM -0600, Gary Learned wrote:
> 1. I have Zope installed in a Windows XP environment. Is it possible to
> move the data.fs file to a location other than the program executable
> 'var' directory. Our executables are under a different backup schedule
> than data files. My other option would be to move the entire zope
> directory over to a data drive.

There's no command-line switch to simply use a different data.fs
location. However, I suspect that using INSTANCE_HOME is what you
want. See: http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/instancehome
 
> 2. In the book, it mentions that Zope Templates have to be total and
> complete html documents.

You're talking about ZPT (Page Templates), right?  They do, but...

> If I want to create separate items like banners
> and navbars that will get sucked into all pages, I assume that means
> they have to be methods that are somehow included into a template? In
> other words, you can't have a portion of a page defined as a template as
> I understand this.

Yes you can. The "completeness" of a template is just so you can see
what it looks like on its own with (optionally) some dummy content
where dynamic stuff goes. You can then use just the relevant stuff in
another page, without pulling in the header or any other stuff you
don't want.
Look at these until you understand them.
http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ZPT/Examples
 
> 3. The book talks about creating a zope on a particular port. Does this
> mean that I have multiple zope services running, or is it possible to
> have a single service monitor multiple ports?

Don't know, sorry. z2.py just mentions running multiple servers on
different ports, using (I assume) the same data.fs.
 
> 4. In the application case study, the book said that experience has
> shown that it's best to have a folder at the root before the top level
> folder of your site, as follows:
> 
> 	/ (root)
> 		Top/ Top Level Folder
> 			SiteRoot/ (Actual Site Root Folder)
> 
> Can someone explain the value of that one additional folder layer? I'm
> not seeing it yet and I'm pretty sure it's just because I am missing
> something.

It makes it easier to back up and/or move your work, because you can
export (or import) your entire site just by exporting that one folder.
If you have a bunch of stuff in your top-level zope directory, backups
are a lot more annoying because you have to export each item
separately.

-- 

paul winkler
home:  http://www.slinkp.com
music: http://www.reacharms.com
calendars: http://www.calendargalaxy.com