Want to build a shop using Zope, but how?

[Doug Hellmann]

In article <9767le$82f$1 at newsreaderg1.core.theplanet.net>, "Franz GEIGER"
<fgeiger at datec.at> wrote:

> I want to do the next step in CGI programming and want to use Zope to
> build a web shop.
> 
> Besides downloading Zope and installing it on my Windows box I printed
> the Zope book and read thru it. There is an example all thru the book
> which is not of great help for me (at least I think so). While it is
> good to teach you the very basics of Zope it does not seem to provide
> advanced topics. When it comes to advanced concepts you are very likely
> to encounter "But this is beyond this book" (ZClasses e.g.).

My understanding was that the Zope book was for beginners, and that there
will be another more advanced book.

You may want to check out the New User How-Tos at
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/nuser.  Reading the online DTML manual
may help as well.

> I've got the impression, that if one wants to use Zope for anything
> advanced he has to download some modules from www.zope.org. But this
> site really confuses me. Every day there are new modules released and
> every few days new versions of those modules. I don't want to spend
> hours and days to figure out what to download so that Zope is of
> advanced help for me.

The Products available on zope.org are components you can instantiate on
your server.  The best place to get help about the Products is to look at
the documentation distributed with them, or to instantiate one and see
what you get -- many include online help.

> Or did I get something completely wrong here? Anyone here who was in the
> same situation? How did you proceed?

The learning curve for Zope is a bit steep, but not terribly long.  There
are actually a few plateaus, so you end up with a stair step learning
curve.

> Any hint's welcome!

Check out the mailing lists on zope.org, too.  They are very high
traffic, but that's generally when Zope developers go for help.

Doug