Birkbeck and Zope: a brief introduction Adrian Tribe, Web Manager: a'tribebbk'ac'uk David Little, We

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Birkbeck and Zope a brief introductionAdrian
Tribe, Web Manager a.tribe_at_bbk.ac.ukDavid
Little, Web Developer d.little_at_bbk.ac.ukBirkbeck
Web Team www.bbk.ac.uk/its/web_team
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Zope Plone 2004-08

• 2004 2 public Zope sites (main corporate site
  and the Students Union site). CCS intranet also
  running in Zope.
• 2008 c.60 sites including
• Corporate web site (Plone)
• 13 out of 17 Schools
• 9 out of 10 administrative departments (including
  Library)
• Various institutes and research centres

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Supply demand

• Birkbecks culture decentralised. Schools /
  departments can choose how to manage their web
  presence.
• Potential recipe for disaster in the old days
  inconsistency, design nightmares, bad
  accessibility, unprofessional.
• However, Zope enthusiastically embraced no
  special technical skills required, less time and
  resource spent on website maintenance,
  professional / consistent look and feel, fully
  accessible.

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2004-06 Keeping pace with demand

• Rapid adoption of Zope sites.
• Production of standards-compliant, CSS-based
  template site. Colours / images easily changed.
  Effective roll-out mechanism.
• Technologies Zope 2.6.4 / CMF behind Apache.
• Customisations TTW.
• EditonPro third-party wysiwyg editor
  (RealObjects). Best of breed at time. Probably
  still the best Java-based, Word-like interface,
  extensible, Javascript API. Kupu not up to
  scratch at time (not XHTML-compliant).

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Zope application development

• Beyond Zope / CMF using Zope to create
  content-based applications.
• Prospectus publishing in 2005.
• Committees website bespoke CMS to handle
  publishing of Birkbeck committee papers.
• Database integration with MySQL databases
  (including synching Zope acl_users with main BBK
  password file -- exUserFolder).
• Learning curve becoming more confident with ZPT
  and Python / filesystem-based development.

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Advanced content management

• Versioning in Zope (Portal Content Versioning
  System).
• Advanced workflows multiple site editors and
  reviewers.
• More devolution of content management cascading
  of training by content editors (mixed success!).

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Challenges

• Zope performance victims of our own success.
  Suddenly had to take performance issues much more
  seriously caching, more robust code, multiple
  instances.
• Collage proprietary CMS purchased for prospectus
  publishing 2006 onwards. Couldnt recreate
  document management capabilities at time in Zope
  (though could now in Plone)
• Another third party system to get to grips with
• Resource implications for Web Team
• Two content management systems. Major part of our
  web presence provided by non-Zope system

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Challenges 2

• Some hostility towards Zope or maybe,
  centralised approach
• Some Schools (a minority) keen on retaining
  independence against standard look and feel.
• Fear of losing control over technical aspects of
  site (mainly larger Schools with own IT
  departments).
• Largely positive response, but some negatives
  mainly from more technically advanced users.
  Negotiation / persuasion needed!

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Moving forward

• Limitations of current Zope environment becoming
  more apparent.
• Zope version in need of updating.
• Zope CMS developments focusing on Plone.
• Currently moving to Plone.
• Current set up Plone 2.5.3 / Zope 2.9.7 / Zeo.
  Legacy Zopes for older sites.

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The future

• Aiming for roll-out of Plone sites with minimum
  overheads (as with old Zope sites).
• Address skinning issues.
• Address performance problems
• Tune Zeo
• Multiple servers?
• Squid for caching
• Pound for load balancing?
• Migration strategy old Zope sites to migrate
  into Plone (when due for review, e.g. when c. 3-4
  years old).