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Is ez publish suitable for my big project?

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patrick gelin	Tuesday 08 June 2004 7:59:23 am Hi, yesturday, I found out <b>ez publish</b> thanks to http://www.cmsmatrix.org and I'm currently reading documentation to learn a little bit more about this product. Nevertheless, I'm getting into trouble looking for some informations so I need help... Firstly, let me introduce my project. It's about an education for Neuchâtel state into Switzerland, and concern around 23000 student and 3000 teachers. The purpose is the Intranet but also the Extranet (a lot of teachers need to access working ressources from home) and share hosting for school web sites (around 100). So this site will be the web portal for the Pedagogic Network. Actualy can view the current Web site (static with little PHP) at http://www.rpn.ch About performance, currently there is around 60 to 200 simultaneous users for 60 web sites hosted into one Windows 2000 server. We are currently installing a Linux RedHat 9.0 server to install <b>ez publish</b>. So I need help about: A. END USERS FUNCTIONS A.1. I have to offer subscription for thematics Newsletters, A.2. Is it possible to offer share hosting for 60 Web school sites, A.3. I have to offer public section and some (what is limit?) privates sections into Internet, I think it's what you call "Extranet" (I need to publish little students pictures to relate classroom activities), A.4. How much time is necessary to build a new "standard" module and integrate it? Is there an open-standard like "J2EE portlet" for modules, is there enterprises proposing modules libraries or service to develop one. By the way It seems to me there is not so many modules compared to Zope application server (around 600), so what about model for modul development and quality? A.5. Is it possible to involve little students into a class to <b>collaborate</b> in order to publish easely some Web pages? A.6. Is it possible to simplify admin interface for young students editors and adults beginner for computer? Is there a spell checker with the WYSIWYG editor? B. SOFTWARE FUNCTIONS B.1. What about performance for private information? Is private infromation us cache(s)??? B.2. What are standards supported (RSS 1.0, 2.0, XHTML, OASIS, ...) ? B.3. What about quality with PHP best practices and design patterns ??? B.4. What about LDAP authentification, LDAP logical schema with organisational units, Is Active Directory supported, ... B.5. Is it possible to install admin section into a physical server and public or others sections into an other physical server? B.6. What do you recommand for PHP accelerator and Database (May be MySQL is faster than POstgreSQL, but what about security...)? C. MISCELLANEOUS C.1. Why there is a lot of Web sites with 2.2 versions and much less with 3 version? C.2. Is there a link between Ez publish CMF and CMF for Zope application server? C.3. Is there enteprise support into Switzerland (french part) ? C.4. What is the limit or the major problem for this product? It's a lot but It's a big project with a lot of functions. Thanks you for your help...
Mark Marsiglio	Tuesday 08 June 2004 9:55:20 pm Here are the ones that I can answer: A.1 - this can be done to some degree by augmenting the standard user class. It is not as functional out of the box as some purpose-built newsletter solutions, but we like it because it is integrated into the other site management functions (access to restricted sections, automated signup, customized content, etc). A.2 - this depends on what makes these sites different. Each section of the eZ publish install can have a different design, different access settings, and different content. (see http://ez.no/ez_publish/documentation/ez_publish_basics/content_management_in_ez_publish/sections) A.4 - The roles and user permissions are quite precise, especially with v3.4. You can have very fine control over who can access what. Your biggest challenge will be automating the policy so that users inherit the correct permissios as they are created (this is not a problem to do, but will require some thought and planning). A.6 - The WYSIWYG editor does not have a spell check. I consider it to be the main weakness of eZ. (answer to C.4) I find that WYSIWYG is a bit of an overstatement, as it does not truly represent what will be published when the user selects "Send for publishing". You can modify the admin templates to create new version that is simpler, but there are many templates, and a complete customization would be a big undertaking - negating many of the benefits of a CMS. However, I have had success simplifying the admin by only modifying a few templates (pagelayout templates) in my projects, but it really depends on what you need. In any case, it is very flexible. B.1 - private (or customized) information can be cached under whatever circumstances you would like. I am not sure how the user would benefit from cached information if each user gets a different display, but we using design keys the cache can be controlled by many functions. We use such control to cache the first time a navigation tree opens to a particular level, and then when the user goes to another page it changes the nav tree but not the header, footer, and background. Regardless, the first time any specific content loads it has to be dynamically generated. B.2 - I know that CSS, RSS, PDF, and XHTML are built in from the start. I have read about SOAP, XML, and others, but am not sure. B.5 - it should be possible to have multiple sites (servers) point to the same database for content. I have never done this, but it seems possible. Good luck with your project... Mark http://www.thinkcreative.com Turning Ideas Into Strategic Solutions
patrick gelin	Tuesday 08 June 2004 11:37:01 pm ok, thank you for all this responses. I would like to add one, just one, linked with (B.2) and your response and also that ez WYSIWYG editor seems to be not free... <b>So, what about open-source community and this product?</b> Is the community very active? is there an other ez web site for this community? For how long time this product is open-source? What is the community model and roadmap decision with ez system? It seems there is a greater number of proprietary modules than open-source modules, and I failed to find out any infromation about open stanndards supported... I think it is a <b>must</b> for an open-source product! Thanks.
Paul Forsyth	Wednesday 09 June 2004 1:30:46 am Patrick, Just a quick answer to your last post. eZ publish has a dual licence, one of which is the GPL. Community projects are typically GPL. Read this page on licences: http://ez.no/ez_publish/licences Contributions should be GPL'd. Also, take a look at: pubsvn.ez.no. In addition to eZ publish source code it contains a community repository in: http://pubsvn.ez.no/community. I've added a few projects to this which i've GPL'd. With the conference just finished there should be some documents appearing on the ez.no site shortly, within a week or so, detailing lots of improvements to the community process. Most of these will be visible on ez.no soon after. Hope this helps a little. paul -- http://www.visionwt.com
Björn Dieding@xrow.de	Wednesday 09 June 2004 4:11:20 am -So, what about open-source community and this product? Is the community very active? I would say so. We were 100 at the conference this year. 3 times more then last year. is there an other ez web site for this community? it is ez.no For how long time this product is open-source? Since ever, 4 years? What is the community model and roadmap decision with ez system? An updated roadmap will be released soon. It is a result from the conference. Please explain what you mean by cummunity mopdel. By the way... I do not not know anybody from swiss at all. bjoern - http://www.xrow.de Looking for a new job? http://www.xrow.com/xrow-GmbH/Jobs Looking for hosting? http://hostingezpublish.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- GMT +01:00 Hannover, Germany Web: http://www.xrow.com/
Xavier Dutoit	Wednesday 09 June 2004 6:14:30 am Hi, Have a look at http://ez.no/community/contributions, you will see that quite a lot of people posted things, also not as much as on Zope... About the speel checker, did you find any not too bad working one in French ? Shouldn't be too complicated to add this feature. Xavier http://www.sydesy.com
Kåre Køhler Høvik	Thursday 05 August 2004 5:50:54 am Hi Sorry for late reply, but I suggest you contact support ( http://ez.no/services/support ) if there's functionaly you're missing, or need help with anything. These links might help as weel : http://ez.no/ez_publish/documentation/development/extensions/module/module_tutorial_part_1 http://ez.no/ez_publish/download/changelogs/ez_publish_3_3/rss_export_and_import Kåre Høvik
Stuart DH	Friday 06 August 2004 9:53:11 am In answer to C.5 - IMHO the single biggest problem with ez publish is the community. Not surprisingly, it doesn't have the community of the low-end apps like the *nukes. Nor does it have the number of active forum posters of the mid-range Mambo, XOOPS etc. However, even in the enterprise leagues where it sits alongside peers such as plone and typo3, IMO, it really can't compete. You've only got to look back through the posts on this forum to find that many go unanswered or the replies are weeks/months after the questions. I'm currently helping to set up an ez publish community at ezpub.co.uk, but I have to say that it is simply uphill all the way. I even started to think about giving up before it got going because the community just isn't around to support it. I was willing to produce a vast library of video tutorials for eZ publish so that people could learn the app quicker, but with so little support it became very hard to get motivated. The good news...it looks as though things are starting to change. We're steadily building the ezpub and ez.no has some big plans lined up for the community. ez.no has a big team of full-time staff and, whilst it isn't cheap, you can live safe in the knowledge that their paid support will work on any major problems that you may have. The current community, whilst small, is very dedicated and usually keen to help out where they can. In short, after months of searching for a really good enterprise-class CMS that could handle a potentially massive project, I'm glad that I chose eZ publish. It's not perfect, but it's got some of the key elements that should ensure it keeps it's place amongst the big guns for many years to come. Cheers Stuart http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk
Paul Borgermans	Friday 06 August 2004 10:43:58 am Hi Stuart Don't give up on your video tutorials, that's a very good initiative! You are right about the small community size and IMHO this will only change if the typical use of ez publish is expanded beyond web publishing and simple e-commerce as it is today. I'll try to do that also a bit "on my own". I also gave up asking questions a while ago because they were left unanswered by the community (I have now paid support for that). Instead it is a unidirectional game for me that is sometimes frustrating with no rewards. Since I can really value the architecture of eZ publish which is pretty unique and sound ... I expected ez publish to be adopted and extended by more talented developers (they are certainly there, but I expected more of them to be present now after almost 2 years since ezp3.0 came out). Yet, I won't give up easily on eZ publish. I think it needs around 12 man-months more development on enterprise features to arrive at a point that blows anything else away in terms of flexibility and the power to map not only any kind of information (the content model) but also entire business processes with a few point and click operations. At that point eZ publish should be renamed to eZ CMS or so, publishing is only part of what you can do with it for intranet and extranet portals. Best regards -paul eZ Publish, eZ Find, Solr expert consulting and training http://twitter.com/paulborgermans