[ZWeb] Newbie thoughts on zope.org re-org

Michael Twomey michael.twomey@sun.com
05 Dec 2001 16:02:08 +0000


Hi, newbie delurking here,

 I've been trying to get to grips with Zope for a couple of months now
so the recent talk of making the zope.org fishbowl more usable is
strongly appreciated here :)

Here are a couple of thoughts on the recent debate (apologies if I
repeat anything but I can't find searchable zope-web archives).

* I feel there is a very slight bias in Zope documentation to talk about
how to code and design you own products rather than how to create a
typical usable site by plugging together whats there. 

By this I mean there is a tendancy to leap straight into developing Zope
objects and code rather than showing a newbie how to quickly plug
together a usable site. I know this might sound very trivial to the Zope
hardcore but to someone who has never seen Zope before just seeing how a
simple site can be put together using already existing products would be
really useful and help hook people in.

Maybe this is due to a lack of "out of the box site" type products but
starting with Zope I had to fight the feeling that I had to learn how to
program/design with DTML and ZClasses just to put together a simple
site. You don't want to do that when you are starting, just seeing the
zope management interface for the first time can be overwhelming.

Granted the true power of Zope is as a development environment but you
want to see a good example of what can be achived by plugging bits
together to get a feel for Zope. I feel by showing this more people can
be drawn into using Zope.

* Zope.org is a mess. Sorry but it is :). It took me a couple of weeks
to find out the existence of CMF. For the beginner a really clear,
simple roadmap of how to learn/start with Zope would be really useful. A
single page which listed all the relevant documents/products in order
would be really great. Sort of a "go here to install zope", "go here to
get cmf, a really useful product" type document would be great.

* I'm still having problems finding Products/howtos. They are presented
as far too long a list and aren't easily searchable. Its a bit
frustrating to search for a product, download it, try it out for a
while, run into a problem, search the lists and find that the product
has been replaced by something else (ok extreme example).

* There are too many wikis. I feel this is a symptom of the layout
problems in zope.org that people find it easier to start a new wiki. By
having so many wikis you start to lose some of the advantages of a wiki 
and increase site clutter.

By the way I am prepared to put work into Zope.org but it will probably
be only a couple of hours a week depending on my commitments. I'm got
reasonable experience in python, xml-rpc and xml as well a bit of web
design experience. Since I've never done a major project in zope don't
worry about getting the newbie perspective from me :)

Sorry about a bit of a rant there but thats my 2 cents worth.

thanks,
	mick

-- 
Michael Twomey
These opinions are my own and do not represent Sun unless otherwise
stated.
Sun Microsystems, Dublin, 8199164, x19164
"Fly my little Makefiles! Fly!"