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Birkbeck and Zope: a brief introduction
Adrian Tribe, Web Manager: [email protected] Little, Web Developer: [email protected]
Birkbeck Web Team www.bbk.ac.uk/its/web_team
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
Supply & demand
• Birkbeck’s 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.
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).
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.
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!).
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. Couldn’t 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
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!
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.
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).
