[Zope] Doing one's part - pushing ISPs to host Zope

Darran Edmundson Darran.Edmundson@anu.edu.au
Fri, 18 Feb 2000 00:33:07 +1100


I have a contract to provide a web site for a local business.
The owner is internet-savy but has no comprehension (nor desire
to learn) html and web-authoring.  His content changes regularly
and he doesn't want to pay someone to tweak his pages.  Oooh, oooh,
Mista Kotta (allusion to '70s American TV), I have the answer.
So I have been trying to get his current provider (located
conveniently across the street from his store) to Zope host.  I
thought the Zope community might enjoy the following ...


---------------

This is from the ISP in response to my initial query.  Note how this
fellow has actually gone and done a bit of reading rather than
"just saying no" (sorry, another allusion) to Zope:


>We might be able to run zope on one of our servers.
>But we probably can't offer this facility inside the time frame you
>mentioned.

>The easiest way to run zope appears to be use their customised web
>server zserver. Which would conflict with our running Apache since they
>would both want to live on port 80.

>Zope also seems to want to do administration on port 8080 which we
>currently use for proxy serving. It is probably possible to change that
>port number so thats not necessarily a problem.

--------------------------------------

And my response ...

Hi Robert,

Thanks very much for your informed response.  Ie., thanks for
taking the time to investigate Zope.  Just to clarify a few
things.  It isn't mission-critical that the X's web
site be on line by 1 March.  Steve, the owner, is happy with
your service (and proximity) so delaying this for "a while"
is fine.

Here at the RSPhysSE at ANU, the IT people use Apache for most
departments.  For ours, they still use the same Apache server on
port 80 which calls Zope via persistant cgi.  You're right that
the ZServer defaults to 8080.  While this can be changed on the
command line to a port of your choice, my preference would be
to have it sit under the existing server.  I didn't do the
actual installation but I believe it was a simple matter of
installing Zope and adding a rewrite rule to httpd.conf.  In
addition to the online help and active Zope maillist (~70 messages
a day), I'm sure our sysadmin James could prefer a description
of stumbling blocks to watch for.  Also, there are a few ISPs
in Australia handling Zope sites who could probably provide
assistance.

Webmastering isn't my primary occupation - I'm nominally a
physicist (but more of a coder than scientist) - but I've become 
somewhat zealous about the benefits of Zope.  I'm about to launch
a new site with lots of dynamic content, user-customizable
CVs, on-line publication and seminar database, etc., created
by *one* person in a couple of weeks of work.  I can leverage
most of the utility Zclasses I've written towards new projects -
things like images that hold copies of different resolutions,
that can automagically render themselves with captions and links
to contained movies, etc.  It really is a remarkable paradigm -
I just wish I could purchase stock in their (private) company.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Darran.