Zope development

[Tim Wilson <wilson@chemsun.chem.umn.edu>]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to let some of you who are interested in Zope or Web
application servers in general know that my Zope-powered Web page is now
available in a usable, but incomplete form. This site shows some things
that are possible with Zope. The site doesn't "look" different, but the
real beauty of Zope is the way the site is constructed.

Here's the URL: http://206.131.108.122:8080/atlas/
(I'll skip the irritating store about our ISP and DNS updates... :-(  )

The key feature of Zope as I see it are code reuse owing to its
object-oriented design philosophy (Zope is "Python Powered") including
acquisition and the available of "plugins" that allow you to easily add
features to your site.

There are a few dynamic feature on my site in particular. The science
quote in the upper left corner is randomly drawn from a set of quotes. The
navigation tree feature at
http://206.131.108.122:8080/atlas/curriculum/particle/ is quite easily
generated using Zope. Today I implemented a full-text search function on
my site in a little over an hour thanks to a built-in cataloging feature.

All in all, Zope is quite cool. I don't have very much Web site building
experience, and I'm barely into post-newbie stage with Python. You don't
need to know Python to use Zope. This entire site was constructed in about
two weeks with *zero* previous Zope experience. (That includes the time it
took to convert existing documents to HTML.) Believe me, that doesn't
highlight my skills as a Web developer nearly as much as it does Zope's
ease of use. I haven't used any of the other Web application server
products, so I'm afraid I can't offer any comparisons.

Later,
Tim

<disclaimer>
Zope isn't paying me for this testimonial. It's offered without warranty
(expressed or implied) for the sole purpose of distracting you from other
work which is probably more pressing and for which you're actually getting
paid. :-)
</disclaimer>

--
Timothy Wilson       | "The faster you  |  Check out:
Henry Sibley H.S.    |  go, the shorter | http://slashdot.org/
W. St. Paul, MN, USA |  you are."       | http://linux.com/
wilson@chem.umn.edu  |       -Einstein  | http://www.mn-linux.org/