Zope/Plone - Is it the right solution?

[kbperry]

Hi everyone,
I am currently a student, and for our HCI class project we are
redeveloping our CS website. I attend a very large university (around
30,000 students), and the CS site will need to be updated by many
people that don't have technical skills (like clerical staff).

The biggest problem with the current site is that not enough people
have access to update it. Since I love python, these seemed like
viable solutions.

1) Is Zope/Plone overkill for this type of project?

2) Why use Plone vs. straight up Zope?

3) Is there a way to get over the steep learning curves (that I have
read about)?

 

[Chris Lasher]

You may want to look at either of the popular frameworks, TurboGears
http://www.turbogears.org/ or Django http://www.djangoproject.com/

I have very little experience with both, but I decided to try learning
the Django framework after watching the Snakes and Rubies videos. (See
http://www.djangoproject.com/snakesandrubies/ ) I am working my way
through the Django tutorials and am very impressed and looking forward
to deploying it on my own site. The admin interface that you get
basically "free" is a very slick touch, especially with all the
widgets. My recommendation is to check out Django's admin interface
(see Adrian Holovaty's presentation of Django in Snakes and Rubies and
http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/tutorial2/ ) and see if that
won't do the trick for allowing easy content contribution without the
contributors having to know any of the Python, HTML, or CSS behind the
pages.

Chris

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

I am currently a student, and for our HCI class project we are
redeveloping our CS website. I attend a very large university (around
30,000 students), and the CS site will need to be updated by many
people that don't have technical skills (like clerical staff).

The biggest problem with the current site is that not enough people
have access to update it. Since I love python, these seemed like
viable solutions.

1) Is Zope/Plone overkill for this type of project?

2) Why use Plone vs. straight up Zope?

3) Is there a way to get over the steep learning curves (that I have
read about)?

do you want to build a web application, use a ready-made CMS, or is the goal to
easily get lots of information on to the (intra)web ?

if the latter, a modern wiki with good access control could be worth investigating:

http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/
http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/HelpOnAccessControlLists

(for performance, you may want to run the wiki behind mod_proxy)

if you want a ready-made content management system, pick Plone.

if you want to build your own web application, you know Python reasonably
well, you don't want much of a learning curve, and you want to start right now,
pick Django.

(I'm now leaving the microphone to the "pick me pick me!" crowd ;-)

</F>

 

[kbperry]

Well,
I guess our main goal in this class is to improve usability and user
experiences at the site.

While we want to improve our site visually and make it more usable to
the prospective students, the site needs to be easily updated. I don't
think that I am looking for a wiki.

I will definitely check out Django and turbogears.

Thanks a ton for the info!

 

[Michele Simionato]

It depends on how much time do you want to spend fighting with the
framework.
I usually do not recommend Zope, unless you want to make a career as a
Zope
consultant. If you have to interact with a relational database, your
life with Zope
may be hard: http://www.jrandolph.com/blog/?p=23

For easy of use nothing beats CherryPy, but I am not sure how stable it
is.
Quixote is nice and small, and pretty easy to use too.
Many likes Django and TurboGears.

Zope and Twisted are for people who have a lot of time to invest.

Michele Simionato

 

[Rene Pijlman]

Michele Simionato:

I usually do not recommend Zope, unless you want to make a career as a
Zope consultant.

You have a point there.

If you have to interact with a relational database, your life with Zope
may be hard:

And if you have to interact with flat files, your life with an RDBMS may
be hard. Zope contains a full-fledged post-relational object database
called ZODB.

The time it took me to learn to program with it (outside of Zope) is less
than 1% of the time I've spent learning the relational model and SQL.

Get your data out of those silly rows and columns, and put it in
first-class objects!

 

[N.Davis]

kbperry wrote:
I attend a very large university (around

30,000 students), and the CS site will need to be updated by many
people that don't have technical skills (like clerical staff).

That is exactly the kind of thing Plone is good at. A good match I would
say.

Check out http://plone.org/documentation/faq

The answers to your other questions can be found there.

 

[Michele Simionato]

Get your data out of those silly rows and columns, and put it in
first-class objects!

Well, there are pros and contras in the choice of a relational database
vs an object
database. Most of the time, there is no choice, since you have a legacy
relation
database to work with. Also, there are many cases where a relational DB
is the
right choice. So I would say that most of the times one has to do with
relational DBs
anyway, so it is a good investement to learn them. The ZODB is easy to
use,
but when it gives errors, it is not obvious at all to understand what
is happening.

Michele Simionato

 

[Rene Pijlman]

kbperry:

1) Is Zope/Plone overkill for this type of project?

No, Plone is an excellent CMS for your purpose.

2) Why use Plone vs. straight up Zope?

Plone is an out-of-the-box CMS for non-technical editors, Zope is the
underlying infrastructure for developers.

3) Is there a way to get over the steep learning curves (that I have
read about)?

There is a steep learning curve when you need to develop custom content
types, application code, integrate other databases and so on.

But when all you want is a CMS for a community-type website, Plone is
fine. I recommend this book, it probably contains all you need to know:
http://plone.org/documentation/manual/definitive-guide
(it's available as web pages and on dead tree as well)

 

[Tim Parkin]

do you want to build a web application, use a ready-made CMS, or is the goal to
easily get lots of information on to the (intra)web ?

if the latter, a modern wiki with good access control could be worth investigating:

http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/
http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/HelpOnAccessControlLists

(for performance, you may want to run the wiki behind mod_proxy)

if you want a ready-made content management system, pick Plone.

I'd heartily agree with Fredrik on this.. If you just want to manage a
set of interlinked documents (i.e. content oriented web pages) then a
wiki will get you going and contributors updating stuff faster than
pretty much anything going.

Plone will give you more structure (allow you to create your own types
of conten or object e.g. courses, buildings, whatever) with more effort
and more maintenance.

Rolling your own with any framework out there will inevitably give you
the most flexibility (you can do pretty much what you want) traded off
against a lot larger investment in time at the start and ongoing.

If you want it to be a project, there isn't much to get your teeth into
in creating a wiki based site (you can write you own modules and
plug-ins I suppose). Plone/Zope3 would challenge you more and you'd have
a chance to learn some different approaches to common cs problems.

If I were to recommend based on you wanting a project, I'd say zope3. If
it's based on getting some content up and editable quickly then I'd say
wiki. If you're aiming for a structured website to handle some of the
typical course info (handling events, rooms, dates, etc) I'd recommend
plone.

Tim Parkin

p.s. The steep learning curve should only be if you want to do something
to 'extend' the plone/zope system. As long as you are happy with the
defaults for common components you shouldn't have too much to learn.

 

[kbperry]

Rene and Tim,
Thanks for the help! I am glad that I didn't rule out Plone yet
because I was able to download and install quickly. My "site" was up
and running very quickly.

For this class we are more focused on the HCI/usability stuff than we
are the coding. I have plenty of other classes that focus on the
coding. I am hoping that we could build an extension or two using
python (if needed), and I would like to completely redesign the main
"skin," but other than that I need the CMS tool so Plone looks like a
great fit.

I tried installing Zope last night, but when I did, I couldn't find out
how to even start it for about an hour after searching. I was worried
that if I went the Plone/Zope route, then I would need to know both.
It looks like Plone just makes Zope much easier to work with.

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

kbperry a écrit :

Well,
I guess our main goal in this class is to improve usability and user
experiences at the site.

While we want to improve our site visually and make it more usable to
the prospective students, the site needs to be easily updated. I don't
think that I am looking for a wiki.

Don't overlook this solution. A wiki can be made good-looking, and you
just can't beat it when it comes to ease of use for non-technical
persons (and for technical persons too...). Modern wikis like MoinMoin
or the Wiki part of Trac are also very extensibles.

For the record, for our own extranet, we're actually switching from CPS
(a very-close-to-Plone CMF) to... Trac - there's not even a subversion
repository around, but we use the Wiki/Ticket/Roadmap combo to manage
our current projects.

Now Plone is a pretty good CMS for Portal-like sites, so it may be what
you're looking for...