Customer Reviews

Zope: Web Application Development and Content Management (Landmark (New Riders))

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book tries to cover slightly different ground than "how to start using Zope to develop web sites." If you're looking for a good general introduction to Zope, I'd look at either Beehive's The Book of Zope, or the Zope Book (the online edition at zope.org; the printed version is quite out-of-date).

This book is basically a walkthrough of several products for Zope (the CMF, ZPatterns, ZUBB, etc.) I doubt you'll find that you've learned much about how to use Zope or how to develop for it, rather than a thin bit about how to apply these products.

I also found that this book felt rather hastily put-together, without much continuity between chapters.

The only reason I'd recommend this book is if you're looking to learn about ZPatterns, and chances are, you aren't.

I have been disapointed by "The book of Zope" and "The Zope book", as they did not help me solve the problems I encountered, or give me a high level vision of how Zope works and how to make the different components work together.
This book is different. It contains all new material, and takes you by the hand on how to build a complex web site, making different components and technologies work together. After my frustration with the other books, I couldn't stop reading this one, and I only wish it had been available sooner.
If you are interested in Zope, and want to build a non-trivial web site, this is an excellent book to get! It will also tell you how to make sure that your web site can scale to lots of users (external databases) or high traffic.

This book is both outdated (it discusses extensively Zope extensions that are no longer supported) and incoherent (it is
just a collection of unrelated example projects only loosely
tied together by the common theme of managing some content on a
web site). You're better off with the Zope Bible (for Zope) and the Content Management Bible (for CM issues generally). However,
there are a few useful things in it so if you can get it for
$5-10 as a remaindered book, go for it.

I was kindly asked to read this book and act as a technical reviewer, and I must say that I am glad I did. The book is well written, and has a number of well thought out examples that for the most part demonstrate clearly some of the most complex issues facing Zope Content Managers and Site Designers.

Unfortunately, a few of the examples (And it is only a few) on some of the most important issues, most notably acquisition, contain glaring errors that could confuse and mislead new Zope users.

I say this is unfortunate, because the quality, and pitching of the book, including numerous URLs where more information, or freely downloadable add-on products can be found, is otherwise just about perfect.

Inspite of the problems I have mentioned, I would recomend that all new Zope users get this book, and work through the examples.

Zope is an exciting Web Application Server. It has the powerful scripting language
in python; it is Open Source Software with strong commercial supports. In fact, the only
thing users and developers often complain about is its deep learning curve, which is
more or less about the lack of good documentation.

This book is an excellent sources for developers. It will jump
start you with a set of essential zope knowledge and products covering serveral
major areas of cutting-edge website architechture:
events publishing (Calendar Tag),
discussion tools and weblog ( ZWiki & Squashdot & CMF & ZUBB & Tracker),
web mail (POPMail & IMapClient & ZmailIn ),
searching ( ZCatalog )
external access,
user management and security

not only it covers in details of the above area and related products, but the
authors did a fine job of making them so easy to follow and understands. Even some
of the most difficult technologies are covered with easy: CMF Tools and ZPatterns,
those two had given me days of headache before were finally making sense to me.

I have read another book before (The Zope Book by Amos and Michel of Zope fame). Both
are excellent and they actually complement each other very well. If you have read those
who complainted about The Zope Book's lack of practical contents (such as database access,
setting up zope with apache etc.), those issues are all dealt in excellent details here
in this book!

If you are one of those who have to deal with every aspect of web-related issues, such as
server setup and administration, web architechture design and development, programmers
and web content design, then this book is a must have!

I've got copies of the Zope Book and Zope Web Construction Kit and this book is better than the other two, but you really have to reference the website... for updates and errata for the source code.

That said - the examples in the book are short and clear and the authors _do_ seem to update the site and reply to emails when errors are found.

This is the _only_ Zope book I'd recommend.

This is a good intro to Zope. If you have a free weekend and want to get to know Zope, this would be a very fine way to do it. Zope is amazingly expandable, and that is one of the things that this book points out & demonstrates with several helpful examples. I was amazed at how much the authors were able to pack into the book & pleased with the way they used products to demonstrate important features of Zope.

Because Zope is so expandable and versatile, however, they had to leave some things out. A topic that could have used a little more coverage (or maybe a lot, maybe a seperate book?) is database integration. It's a big topic, though, so I guess it makes sense that it isn't fully fleshed out.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who (like me) is still getting to know Zope. It's very clearly written and well laid out. Kudos to the authors and publisher.

db

First there are lots of code snippets right in the text,
which makes it rather easy to follow things when you don't
have a Zope box next to you. Sometimes they are a bit too
in-depth (like the listing of the SQLLevers in the ZPatterns
example) but most time they are selected wisely.

I found a lot of different topics explained (from Zope
for Newbiews, CMS, lots of 3rd Party Products, System Administration,
ZEO) which all bring enough knowledge to you, to start working with
them right after reading. (Or after downloading from the online
website that comes with the book.)

The Chapter (actually there are 3) about ZPatterns is actually
the most important to me, because it helped me understanding
this complex topic in a couple of days.

This book is a big must-read for all people trying to gain "Zope-Zen"!

The book gives startingpoints and does save all the wading through zope org to
find a product.

After installing some of the examples one is at a level where the amount of
products on zope org is less frightening.

And it is a real example on how to setup the 'first' site, inclusive noting
deficensies of the choosen setup.

I was fortunate to be invited to act as technical reviewer on this book. It is aimed at Zope site developers who have to get full featured sites up quickly.

This book fills a real need in Zope Documentation. It's well written, well researched and practical. Highly recommended for all Zopistas.