[Zope] Please help in selecting approach (zope2, 3, +grok, plone) for a new project

[Martijn Faassen]

Hello,

It's a good question. :)

On Nov 7, 2007 7:51 AM, Chetan Kumar <chetan.mlist at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am to start working on a new web (site/application) project. Wanted
> to find out better route from among the available choices. In other
> words what are *you* using ?

It depends on what I'm doing. If you need a full-featured CMS, use
Silva or Plone or
something like that, based no Zope 2 (with Zope 3 technologies).

I use Grok for web applications. Now since I'm one of the originators
of Grok that's not a big surprise. :)

Many people use Plone as a foundation for their own web applications.
That works if the web application can be fit into
Plone; you'll get a UI to work with and a ton of features. It can also
be frustrating and hard to maintain if the web application isn't much
like Plone. In that case instead of trying to bend Plone to your will
it might make sense to start with another framework.

> I have used zope 2 and plone in my past projects. The question arises
> now as we have new rewrite of zope with grok on the horizon and plone
> as always is there (with a new version). There is also new CMS based
> on zope (hivert announced recently on zope-dev). Exciting times, but a
> little confusion too.
>
> The site will tend towards social networking some time later as I see
> the requirements taking shape. At the moment it is about people
> joining a community website and exchanging information on a particular
> topic, reviewing items (articles, links, photos) added to the site.

Since you're talking about a community website it sounds at least
initially to me that Plone, or some other community-oriented CMS could
be a good fit. Silva doesn't sound like a good fit as it doesn't focus
on community features primarily.

Meanwhile all these things do tend to converge. Zope 2 software like
Plone is using Zope 3 technology. Grok and Zope 3 aren't
far apart and we're doing our best to make Grok compatible with
"classic" Zope 3 applications. I'm sure eventually Grok technology
will make it into Zope 2.

Regards,

Martijn