[Zope] Generations of websites

[ERIC Lawson - x52010]

I'm considering managing a site, currently 23K files and 1K directories,
with Zope.  I've perused various Zope resources, among them the Zope
Book and sundry How-Tos, but have yet to find clear answers to a couple of
salient questions.  My hope is that I can get some good answers, or at
least some good leads to good answers, by writing to this list.  

The first and most pressing question:  suppose I implement the site using
Zope, particularly page templates and DTML.  Supposing I need to retreat,
then, how can I return to my directory-and-file based site?  That is, Zope
stores the site as objects in a database; how can I write those objects
back to files and directories?  Is there an established mechanism for
this?  Granted, I can whip up some scripts to replace, e.g., <dtml-var
standard_html_header> with the standard header, in all files, but.... I'm
asking if there is some way to use Zope or a utility to write out the
entire site _as it would be served to a visitor_, that is, with all DTML
and page template logic replaced.

The second, less pressing but still vital question:  how can Zope be used
in such a way as to preserve the existing URL targets?  That is, suppose
the current URI is
http://www.somesite.com/Documents/reflist/pubCategs/Categories.html, and
that URI has been bookmarked by visitors:  how, other than a redirection,
can that URI be preserved in zope-logic?

many thanks,
Eric

-- 

James Eric Lawson
Research Publications Editor
National Simulation Resource

eric@bioeng.washington.edu

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