Zope/Plone - Is it the right solution?

[Tim Parkin]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> "kbperry" wrote:
>>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.

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.