On Friday 03 November 2006 11:25 am, Chad Walstrom wrote: <snipped some text> > In any case, it would be interesting to hear from a Zope fanboy/girl > to see what their community thinks of the product. I will do my best. ;-) I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself. I will relate my experience and my opinions about Zope, Plone and Python. Not necessarily in that order. If you don't really care about any of this don't read any further. 1. To the question about Python - yes its still out there and still going strong. I find it turning up in a lot of places where I don't expect it. If you want a good exploration of why python is worth the effort go to http://mindview.net/FAQ/FAQ-012 follow the link on the page and download Bruce Eckel's presentation "Why I Love Python". 2. Zope - Yes it has a steep learning curve. I have often described it as a giant set of steps. Once you get a certain amount under your belt you can do really cool things quickly. You eventually hit the next wall and need to scale that. Fortunately each step is shorter than the last. I can't speak to Zope 3. I haven't had the time to dig into it. Most of the Zope stuff I do right now is Plone related and that has me firmly in the Zope2 world. But I've been using it for 6+ years at this point and I'm comfortable there. 3. Plone - Keeps moving forward. They are "backporting" some of the cooler things from Zope3 into Plone with each successive release to make the conversion to Zope3 with Plone 3 or 3.5 (not sure when they plan to switch over) easier. That said Plone 2.5 employs the Pluggable Authentication Services (PAS) by default which should make integration with other security environments better. Just last week I helped somebody setup a Zope 2.9/Plone 2.5 site with cache-fu using Squid for improved performance. This took very little effort to get going. The recent Plone conference was hosted by a non-profit group which has help raise the profile of Plone in that market. This generated some healthy discussion on the TechSoup site that provides technology help for non-profits. Plone development is going ahead full steam. Zope development continues as more and more of the techniques of Zope3 are made available to Zope2 via the Five product. As far as I can tell most of this stuff deals with lower level functions that take advantage of advances in Python itself. FWIW in the past 6 months I have been contacted by several people about Plone sites they have setup or are considering and requesting assistance or information about how to do what they want to do. This includes small businesses, large businesses and individuals. And far from being a detriment to Plone I think Zope is an asset. When I was teaching Zope and Plone to would be web developers I used to describe it as a "layered" model. Each layer (Python, Zope, CMF, Plone) provided pieces that made getting a website running easier. Each layer also required you to buy in to how it did things to get the benefits of those functions. This makes creating sites in this environment very simple once you know how it all works together. I've seen several articles, particularly "At the Forge" columns in Linux Journal that express the sentiments of many of the comments here. Basically that this or that tool on Zope is a really good choice for doing whatever task is being discussed. But you have to deal with Zope. In some cases Lerner even suggests that a certain Zope solution better than the alternatives, but you need to "get" Zope and that can be a problem for people. There have been several comparisons of FOSS Content Managers. In most reviews Plone rates highly but Zope and the learning curve are brought up as potential stumbling blocks. In most cases lately these articles suggest Drupal. Basically when I read articles like that I realize that I don't need another framework or app server I'm already using one that does what I need, and does it well. But then again I am, to use Chewie's words, a Zope Fanboy. ;-) -- Jack Ungerleider jack at jacku.com http://www.jacku.com