[thelist] Python Web Scripting with Zope

Seb seb at poked.org
Fri Oct 24 05:15:25 CDT 2003


On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 09:26:49 +0100, Jason Handby <jasonh at corestar.co.uk> 
wrote:

>> There are some very robust enterprise-class solutions that have been
>> built using Zope.
>
> I'd be interested to see links to them. The Zope website can still only 
> list
> a very few example sites; pretty much the same number as when I looked a
> year or so ago. And, given that they make the thing, you would have 
> thought
> they would be falling over themselves to list every example they knew 
> about.
>
> How does its takeup compare to ASP.NET? or J2EE?

Hi Jason,

Wow, finally my chosen specialist subject comes up on [thelist]... well, 
here's my 60 seconds in the big black chair...

First, development of systems in ZOPE alone can be quite daunting, as, 
although ZOPE provides an excellent platform for development, it doesn't 
provide a great framework for building sites. (Zope is built and run by 
the ZOPE corporation, so the official promotion of ZOPE coincides with 
ZOPE Corporation's business interests rather than the activites of the 
community around it.)

So, my first suggestion would be to check out Plone (http://plone.org). I 
should point out that I'm a developer for the project, as well as 
professionally developing Plone sites for paying customers.

Plone is an entire content management framework, which happens to provide 
a full-featured content management system out-of-the-box. We are currently 
working like fevered monkeys to release Plone 2.0, which represents 
massive improvements over the 1.0 version. Whilst Plone currently supports 
a modular workflow system, complete rights management, content 
transformations (upload word docs, get multiple formats back!) 
fully-customisable skinning ... Plone 2.0 provides fully XHTML valid skins 
that are WCAG1 AAA validated... I could go on for ages about Plone, but 
it's best for you to see it yourself.

Other ZOPE sites? Well, http://www.zettai.net is a very successful ZOPE 
+ Plone hosting community run by a nice guy called George Donnelly. George 
is a regular contributer and developer to both ZOPE and Plone, and is 
especially welcoming of new users.

http://www.railpassengers.org.uk is an example of a complete web+extranet 
multi-tiered CMS (I built it ;) that serves the rail industry in the UK.

Heck, here's a nice long list: http://plone.org/about/sites

Hmm, take-up of Python? Well, we're getting a huge number of Java refugees 
at the moment. Python is a fully object-oriented language, which shares 
some simiarities with Java, but is a lot easier to learn. I personally use 
it to program games in my spare time, and it's got performance to spare. 
It's always difficult to judge usage of a programming language, but 
anecdotal evidence suggests that Python's usage is growing pretty rapidly.

Right, that should be enough to start you off. Have fun!

- seb


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