[Pydotorg-redesign] Re: Moving python.org to Zope

[Aahz]

[switching to pydotorg-redesign]

In addition, it's my belief (based on conversations with a number of
expert Zope people, including my cousin (Michael Bernstein, co-author of
_The Zope Bible_))

no Way! Michael-webmaven Bernstein is your cousin? I guess you got all the
good looks in the family. :)

<smirk> Don't let him hear that -- he's the vain one.

that Zope3 represents an quantum leap forward in
Zope's power *and* usability over Zope2. But I'm adamantly against
converting to Zope3 until it goes production, and I think the pain of
doing a double conversion to Zope2 followed by Zope3 just isn't worth it.
Can you provide any convincing arguments against my position?

hmmm. I agree with your concerns and the opinions you stated.
I agree that Zope3 will be a quantum leap. But it is a ways off.
But the final release of Zope3 is expected to have a reasonable
migration path for up to date Zope2 code. I dont think python.org is
going to have any challenging objects that would break, which I think
is the technical concern. It's mostly text/HTML based documentation
which will be trivial to convert. My understanding is the conversion
issues with Zope2 to Zope3 are about deeper custom-Zope objects
called Products and External methods in Zope2, which I dont suspect
are really needed for python.org. I think if we stay with stock Zope
objects, we would be ok. I could be wrong....

That's what I'm concerned about. The only iron-clad reason for using
Zope as opposed to some other system is Zope's support for full-blown
CMS. I've been assuming that this will require extensive customization
to use appropriately, and that migrating Zope2 to Zope3 will require a
fair amount of work. Less work than the original Zope2 converstion,
probably, and even likely less work than going directly to Zope3 from
the current site.

But I'm still wondering just how much work the double conversion is
likely to be, given that the initial Zope2 conversion almost certainly
will take more work than going straight to Zope3.

AND Zope.org is finalizing a long painful migration, and they went
with Zope2/CMF+Plone. If it's good enough for the Zope community, I
think that says something.

Not really. After all, these are people who already know and love Zope.
Perhaps you're right that some form of test/case-study would be
appropriate, but evaluating it is going to take a lot of work, too.

I only suggested it to make python.org easier to maintain, which it
would once you got over the hump. So convert it now, and get 2 years
of making life easier, and then look at Zope3 which might have its
first maintenance release by then.

As I think I've said before, unless it's clear that we can reach the
crossover point in productivity in less than a month, I don't think we
can afford it.

And a zope generated site can still be mirrored, because it can be
designed as is...very static. It's just that now you will have easier
publishing and delegation of maintenance responsibilities.

That I know about. Essentially, we'd have a separate server that runs
Zope and it'd push to the current server.