[Zope-CMF] newbie looking to buy a clue

Douglas Perry doug@safety.com
Thu, 30 May 2002 11:49:13 -0400


LOL. I'm in the same boat too. Actually I talked my way into my mess. :-)

The first thing you have to understand about the CMF is that it's a
foundation for a content management solution you build yourself. If you want
something more complete and ready to go out of the box, try Plone
(www.plone.org). That is what I am using to develop an intranet.

As long as you don't need a "weblog" type page on on the front page of your
intranet, you can accomplish your intranet project in a day or two with
Plone. It does have its limitations and if you try it and don't like it,
you'll have to take the CMF (warts and all) and build your own solution with
it.

Squishdot is annother approach but not everyone likes a Slashdot-like
intranet experience. Namely the type of dudes in your company that wear
saffron yellow ties, deep blue shirts, and suits that cost more than the PC
on your desk. They have been known to use words like "capitalize", "value
add proposition", and "paradigm shift".

To survive in the CMF world, you'll need more than a basic knowledge of
Zope. Do you have a copy of "The Zope Book"? If not, run (don't walk) to
your bookstore and get a copy. This is your means of survival. For CMF, get
comfortable with chapters 9 and 12 of "The Zope Book". This will come in
handy when you have to add on your own functionality to your CMF projects
via ZClassses.

Also "The Zope Web Application Construction Kit" is good in explaining parts
of the CMF though skimpy on the details of DTML and other Zope basics. Start
with "The Zope Book" first then tackle "The Zope Web Application
Construction Kit" later.

To do anything useful in CMF, you'll need to understand Page Templates. DTML
is very rarely used in the CMF, it uses an XML-like tags as its means to
provide a template language. I'm reading "Zope: Web Application and Content
Management" because it covered this topic the best out of other books.
Knowing ZPT is vital if you want your own content/resource "boxes" that
appear on ZopeLabs (www.zopelabs.com) or www.zettai.com. The same goes if
you want to customize the internals of CMF.

The most helpful resource I've found is chatting on irc.openprojects.org in
#zope. My nick there is nhlinux if you want to stop by there and chat with
me.

Ooops, this reply took too long! I see my dude who wears a saffron yellow
tie, deep blue shirt, and a Saville Row suit in my pereferal vision. Gotta
go!