[Zope] plone instances

[Dieter Maurer]

Carlos Ananías Del Águila wrote at 2004-9-14 19:07 +0200:
>I'm a zope newbie. I'm currently developing a
>website to generate plone sites aimed at educational
>purposes of the university where i'm studying.

It is a good idea to read the Zope Book (2.6 or 2.7 edition, online).


>I'd
>like to know how could i create different plone
>instances from a simple page allocated in the zope
>server (it acts as a websites generator). It consist
>of a form that ask for the basic information to create
>the plone instance : id, title and description.

You can do it via the Zope Management Interface (ZMI)
and therefore, you can do it in your own code.
Everything, you see in the ZMI can be done by yourself.

Zope (and its ZMI) are open source. Look at the source
of the relevant ZMI pages and emulate it in your own
forms and actions...

>Is it
>possible to add more fields to that form in order to
>accurate the plone instance configuration (i.e., a
>list of products that the teacher can choose to
>install).

In principle yes, but your corresponding action must interpret
the additional information.


Plone sites are created in the standard way, which is:

   destinationFolder.manage_addProduct[productName].constructor(arguments)

For a Plone Site, this becomes

   destinationFolder.manage_addProduct['CMFPlone'].
   manage_addSite(
     id,
     title="Portal",
     description='',
     email_from_address='postmaster at localhost',
     email_from_name='Portal Administrator',
     validate_email=0,
     custom_policy='Default Plone',
     RESPONSE=None,
     )

BTW: The plone mailing list might be better suited for Plone related
  questions.

-- 
Dieter