Re: Website for local university

Hi Dan,
    We've been working with Zope since early 2001 and Plone since early 
2003.  We built and maintain cumberlandcollege.edu on Zope, and we're 
working on a number of Plone sites.
    Rather than "Plone, the ready-to-go CMS", I think the most useful way 
of looking at Plone/Zope is as a wacky Swiss army knife of powerful, 
adaptable web application tools, all ready to go/use/modify.  However, your 
website is to be a slim little pocketknife with just a few of those 
tools.  So... for you (and for my company), the job is to know how to 
whittle down the number of blades to create the perfect knife.
    Start with Plone.  Take out the "Join" feature, and even hide the login 
capabilities entirely.  But you leave login there for your 30 web content 
folks.  Then decide what types of content objects you need for development, 
and include only those few as the available choices for your web content 
managers.  Don't mess with the front end for the prototype, trying to 
pretty it up, other than your department logo perhaps.  Just work on (0) 
making clear your goals for the site, (1) deciding on the blades you need 
in your knife to meet those goals, (2) making unavailable (or invisible to 
your content folks) the blades you don't need, and (3) modify/create new 
blades with Python and ZPT to meet special needs or functionality you 
desire.  Finally, after prototyping, worry about the overall site 
design.  There's no need to use the magical stock Plone tabs and other 
autogenerated links... build a great design and enter the links for 
navigation in whatever way you want, manually or using Python and ZPT to 
generate them.  You end up with a great looking "knife" with the perfect 
blades for your needs.
     Lots of folks on this and the other Plone/Zope listservs would (and 
do) offer nearly instantaneous informal help via listserv, all the 
time.  And there are plenty of organizations that have Plone/Zope 
experience and can offer you consulting and/or development support, as much 
or as little as you need or can afford.  I highly recommend this as a 
platform for your project.  It is great for you that your development team 
is open to new ideas and open source as it sounds; they will love working 
with Python, and enthusiasm helps.   For three years we have been saying, 
"Zope is so cool!", and we think it only more so with each new 
project.  You're in good shape for going with Plone/Zope.  Keep us informed.

=P

Paul Howell
(two hats: University of Kentucky faculty member, and CEO of a small 
elearning/web development company)



At 01:19 PM 10/1/2003, Dan Meeking wrote:
>I'm involved in a project to redevelop a website for a University's 
>Business School.
>...Plone is nice, but would have to be tweaked significantly...
>...Does anyone have any experience in "transforming" Plone to better 
>support this sort of environment?
>...I have to believe that there are more projects of the "public site" 
>nature than there are of the "portal" nature!  Can anyone shed light on 
>this for me?  What am I missing?



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