[Zope] How should my ISP set up Zope?

Felix Ulrich-Oltean felix@chaptereight.com
Thu, 4 Jul 2002 15:23:03 +0100


Hi

I'm looking to "help" my ISP (aletia.com) to add Zope to its list of
services. I'm not very clued up on Zope at all, so I'd apreciate some
advice on how best to do it.

On each server (RH 7.2) they host several dozen users - generally all
www stuff happens through Apache VirtualHost entries - i.e. I have a
~/public_html directory and I can put .htaccess files in there to
specify how I want my pages to work.

What is the best way to install Zope?  I can think of 2 possibilities:

1. Each user can have their own Zope installation (it's not that big and
they can do what they like with it).  Then I guess as long as they
install mod_fastcgi on apache, and make Zope run FastCGI-aware, you've
got a decent system. The issues I have with this are:

- how would you get the Zope server started when they reboot the
machines (which does happen now and again)
- can Zope and Apache get along if the users don't have access to
httpd.conf, but only to .htaccess files under their ~/public_html?

2. There's one big Zope installation, and the ISP sets up an account
for each user who's interested, with a virtual domain and gives them
the Manager role for everything under that domain.

I would appreciate advice/ideas.  Some issues could include:

- best way of providing backups
- logging issues
- installing Zope products

Thanks in advance,

Felix.