[Tutor] [opinions?] Web development... (kind of long)

[Rob Andrews]

Israel Evans wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone...
> 
> I'm in a bit of a quandry.  I have a number of websites that I'm working on,
> mostly personal non professional jobs, but a few of them need to be of that
> caliber.  I am very interested in using Python to automate a lot of the
> creation of individual pages and taking care of the tedious task of updating
> a frequently updated site.  I've looked at a number of options, but none of
> them have filled me with glee as of yet.  I'm calling out to this wonderful
> list to see if any of you with web development experience have any
> resounding opinions on the web publishing options available to us
> pythonistas(or fledgling pythonistas as the case may be).
> 
> I've looked at Zope but it seems to be a very greedy paradigm.  Everything
> must be fed to the great Zope management interface, registered, methodized
> and otherwise recreated.  It feels as if I'm no longer following the
> standards of the w3c and creating html, xhtml, xml and so on.
> 
> I was hoping Webware would be a more relaxed lightweight alternative, but I
> was having trouble getting everything working.  This may have to wait until
> I upgrade my pc later this year.
> 
> Python Server Pages sounds great, but it's a Java/Jython thing and I just
> seem to have this prejudice against using java when I have Python.  I know
> it's not the same thing. I know I'm actually writing in Python and the Java
> part only comes in as the final form of the code in much the same way that C
> Python  ends up being C somewhere down the line.
> 
>   My goals are as follows;
> I'd like to create a number of templates for the look and feel for all pages
> in a site.
> I'd like to create a number of ways the site would be updated automatically
> whenever new content is added to either a database or the directories of
> which the site is made of.
> It would be great if I could do this on the client, but the Server Side is
> nice as well.
> I'd like the content to be dynamically loaded in as it is requested by the
> user.
> 
> I come from a land of strict XHTML couple with CSS and Javascript.  I'm only
> now getting into the crazy world of Server Side web applications, persistent
> data, and python programming.  I'd like to create documents that adhere to
> the standards of XHTML, XML and so on and still have something like server
> side includes to carry out the programming parts of things.  I'd also like
> to at least have those documents remain inviolated by the code.  The Code
> should be able to grab what files it needs, do the things it is supposed to
> do and publish it as standards compliant documents.  It just creeps me out
> to have things mingle too much.
> 
> Anyway.. Sorry about the rambling.  I know there are many folks out there
> with much more experience than I and I hope to hear from these kind and
> knowing souls to help me resolve my quandry.
> 
> Thanks a bunch,
> 
> ~Israel~
> 

I'm looking at a lot of the same issues as I work toward automating
Useless Python. There are a number of solutions, as you've already
noticed, and any of them will require deciphering, setup, and
maintenance.

How large are these sites expected to be? Do you expect/hope to dish out
your web pages from databases of content? How frequently do you expect
to have to manually change things about the site? Try to anticipate what
you will need your websites to do six months from now (at least), even
though that is far easier said than done.

We had no idea back at the start of the year that Useless Python would
see so much activity. It appears now that what this site needs most
right now is for the people who contribute content to the site to be
able to post and update material without having to wait for me to get
around to doing it manually (and to see thier page hit statistics). It
would also be great to give people options on how to browse the content,
along the lines of search-engine-styel queries maybe. I still haven't
decided exactly how to get around all the details of everything without
a security nightmare.

okay, I'm through babbling for a minute,
Rob
-- 
A {} is a terrible thing to waste.
Useless Python!
http://www.lowerstandard.com/python