[Zope] some advice ?

[Mike Renfro]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2002 at 02:45:00AM +1000, Rex Chung wrote:

> I am wondering if using Plone/CMF would help me implement such a
> site or how will it help. I need the user management component but
> can I do it with Zope's user management and using ZMI as the content
> management interface.

If by "user management", you mean "separate accounts for a relatively
small number of people creating content", then pure Zope would
suffice. If you mean "everybody gets a customized view of the site
based on their username/password, and I want to build a portal", then
you'd probably need CMF or Plone.

> I am most confused with the content type, since what I need is probably
> a course/timetable management product and different type of users have
> different properties.

Your timetable manager is done in CGI, and I have no idea regarding
its supporting data structures. So it's tough to make any
recommendation on how to convert it. You may even decide that that
portion of the site doesn't need to be Zope-managed. Depending on what
you want in a "course product", I'd probably start with MaxM's Easy
Product (http://www.zope.org/Members/maxm/HowTo/easyProduct), which is
exactly what I did for my local "lab software", "lab book", and "lab
computer" products, seen at http://www.cae.tntech.edu/about/software ,
http://www.cae.tntech.edu/help/library , and
http://www.cae.tntech.edu/about/hardware , respectively.

> I'm open to any advice/suggestions as to what is the best/easiest
> way to implement the CSE homepage.

If the goals are to:

- produce consistently-themed pages, including navigational elements

- delegate responsibilities for different areas to different people

then that's all entirely possible without CMF or Plone.

-- 
Mike Renfro  / R&D Engineer, Center for Manufacturing Research,
931 372-3601 / Tennessee Technological University -- renfro@tntech.edu