Changelog

Contents

• Useful Documentation
• Hosting
• Products
• Web site design
• Sites I've created or helped with that run on Zope
• Other Details
• Tips / in Retrospect

Useful Documentation:

• zope.org -- the main community web site for the Z Object Publishing Environment. There has been an effort afoot to improve this site for several years.
• cmf.zope.org -- the main community web site for the Zope Content Management Framework. Alas, the CMF is not yet as well-documented as the basic Zope is.
• Dieter's showDocumentation -- a handy tool for finding documentation. Do your wrists a favor and rename it "sd" (easier to type). Zpydoc looks like something similar, but I haven't tried it.
• ZopeLabs -- way more useful than Zope.org for learning how to make Zope do what you want it to.
• Zope programming sites in other languages:
  • Francais
  • Deutsche -- I have used this site. It has good pointers.
  • italiano
• Dieter's book, Building Dynamic WebSites with Zope
• the Zope Book
• Zope Mailing lists:
  • archives on gmane:http://news.gmane.org/?match=zope
  • lists.zope.org

  The two lists I check on occasion are Zope-Announce and Zope-CMF . Sometimes Formulator-general as well.

• ZPT tutorial -- I think it is a bit out of date. Check out plone for newer ZPT techniques. In the old days (2000) I used some DTML, but now use ZPT.
• How to move or rename a CMF site
• Hernan's Zope Shelf -- useful if you can view Windows CHM (Compiled HTML help) files and aren't connected to the internet.
• Raphael's Page of Useful Links

Hosting:

• Freezope.org -- free zope hosting. Carfreeuniverse runs on freezope! You're stuck with an old zope (2.4) and limited products (no ReST (restructured text)!), and you need to make an empty robots.txt file, but their sever runs well, has good uptime, and the price can't be beat.

Products:

• Epoz -- a cross-browser-wysiwyg-editor for Zope. Used on this site for documents. Probably should be also made available for newsitems. If you want that, let me know!
• Formulator -- useful in making forms easy to manage. I don't use it on carfreeuniverse, but I do use it for carfreecity.us . In fact, I taught David Ceaser how to use it, so he can manage the forms and I only have to write a ZPT to display them!
• You'll want a decent editor for working with scripts / html / ZPTs. I use vim . I'm not sure it's the best for me or you, but it has syntax coloring, and I'm using it right now.
• External Editor -- very handy.
• ZopeSecurityAudit

Sites I've created or helped with that run on zope:

• experienceart.org
• carfreeuniverse
• carfreecity.us

Web site design:

• Top ten mistakes in web design
• Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
• Lynx Viewer
• the 50th site
• Web style guide

Other details:

• Godaddy used for domain name registration, and $15 paid to amaze.nl for having domain names point to my freezope account. For a while I tried using Zettai.net, but George then limited the $60/year plan to one CMF site, it was having a lot of downtime/sluggishness/email sending lag, and it's much easier to feel good about web programming and keeping up sites as a hobby when your hobby doesn't cost much.

Tips / in retrospect:

I spent a lot of time futzing with zope. But now it is (fairly) easy for me to do things on the web. And I use all open-source software (though my laptop runs Win2k because, at the time, it still had better sound and suspend-to-disk support than linux). Remember always, your health is most important. Take things slow. Be patient. Don't stay up all night working on the computer. Make sure to get your exercise: strength , flexibility, and endurance (yes I'm writing to myself here). Carfree people need to be able to use their bodies for transportation!

In the end, Zope and CMF and Freezope have been useful for me in expanding the opportunities I have to communicate. I would much rather be a writer than a programmer. But I only want to write about what interests me and in ways that interest me. I would also like to give others the same opportunity I wish for myself. So, while not yet complete in its features, carfree universe is a place I can publish documents for the public and others can do the same! Experienceart.org is a site for me, focusing on my past. CFU is a site for me and for others thinking about the future.

When I implement the auto-notification about site updates, I will have a publishing system that has all the features I wished for.

While Structured Text (scroll down) is primitive, I find I use it for creating most documentation. ReST has a Table of Contents feature I would love to be able to use. Here's an ReST tutorial . ReST is already a part of the base zope 2.7 install and a backport exists for 2.6. I hope someday I'll get to use it for my writing, yet that my old structured text documents continue to work.

If you need help on your web projects (especially if you're a car-free person), let me know.

Change Log:

2003-06-20-0907

added links to zope shelf and Raphael's links

2004-06-28-1626

added web site design section