[Zope] - Virtual servers

[Dave Goodrich]

On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Andreas Kostyrka scratched:
>On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Mike Pelletier wrote:
>
>> 
>>     It would please me if Zope was able to treat the hostname portion of a URL
>> as another object to be traversed (with a default if no objects seem to match
>> the hostname).  Did that make sense?  Basically, I want to publish multiple
>> different web sites with different domain names but with a single ZHTTPServer
>> and a single point of administration.  Is this something that's already been
>> planned, or should I try my hand at it?
>Use Apache with mod_rewrite/mod_proxy.
>
>IMHO this is outside of the scope of Zope -> Zope should be website
>development tool, not a Webserver.
>
>Andreas

Why not?  What if websites were not built but staged.  If Zope was a server it
could do so much more than the standard webserver is now capable of.  I have
used development tools that constructed the standard website like Zope could,
build pages based on what the designer wants, this works fine for what we know
of websites right now.

Think for a minute if a designer could stage content, arrange layout, and leave
the building up to the user.  A truly dynamic website.  

Consider this, a simple example of a three tiered website designed to serve
content based on the users interaction with the website's content and not with
the webserver.  

A site has a top level with each object assigned three
properties,  propA = 1, propB =2, propC =3.  A user enters the site at page 1
and selects a link to the second level, these properties carry with him.  The
DTML gets these properties and displays the pages accordingly.  The DTML also
changes the propB to 12.  Our user now clicks a link to the second tier of the
site, the DTML displays the page according to the properties of a user who came
from the second level of tier one.   The DTML displays the page, loading content
in differing fashions for users with propB =12 than for users with propB = 2. 

The idea of storing little chunks of content, reused in different contexts,
based on what a user is doing "right now" is very powerful.  The content can be
updated in realtime, the display of that content can change depending on how a
user arrives at a given document, when he arrives, and where he has been before.

We have built sites like this, but the tools available can only do this
staticly, you end up with a thousand pages of navigation to display 100 pieces
of content because you have to make a new page for each "context".  You have
tp prepare for every instance of of every potential user. Zope can allow you to
stage the content, make it available to the entire website, the designer can
use DTML to decide how and when this content is displayed on the fly based on
user interaction.

Zope could make the static page, delivered from disk, old hat, good for
archival uses.  The ability to deliver every page on the fly makes using a
seperate server a burden, Apache would be only a  path to Zope.  Why not let
Zope stand alone?  

DAve.