Zope/Plone - Is it the right solution?

[Fredrik Lundh]

"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.

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>