[bndfc-web-tech] Fwd: [chris at webarchitects.co.uk: How about using Plone rather than MKDoc for bndfc.co.uk?]

[Chris Croome]

Hi

Following is an email I sent out last week to float the idea of using
Plone rather than MKDoc for the site.

So far people I have mentioned this to seem to think it might be a
runner :-)

Chris


----- Forwarded message from Chris Croome <chris at webarchitects.co.uk> -----

From: Chris Croome <chris at webarchitects.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:57:01 +0100
To: Alan Dawson <aland at burngreave.net>, Paul Taylor <pault at burngreave.net>
Cc: info at webarchitects.co.uk
Subject: How about using Plone rather than MKDoc for bndfc.co.uk?
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i

Hi

I remember discussing with Alan the things that he didn't like about
MKDoc after Adam and I did the presentation, I remember him mentioning
that his concerns were around the fact that burngreave.net wouldn't be
free to deploy MKDoc on multiple servers without paying for MKDoc
licences, that there seemed to be no easy, documented, framework for
developing plug-ins and that there wasn't a big community of developers.

These concerns would be addressed if, rather than using MKDoc to run the
site, we used Plone:

  http://plone.org/

Advantages:

- It already has an events component, I have put a copy of the form
  fields it has at the bottom of this page:

    http://testers.mkdoc.com/ideas/components/text/event/

- There is a one-click install version for OSX and Windows which would
  save us having to install a dev server in your office, every desktop
  machine is easy to set up as a dev machine.

    http://plone.org/downloads

- Its user interface has been translated into several languages already
  (though not all the ones that are needed for this job):

    http://plone.org/development/teams/i18n/existing-translations

Issues:

Although it is functionally quite close to MKDoc we don't (yet) have
much experience using it, so there is some uncertainty and risk as a
result.  However it's templating is very close to MKDoc's (Petal is a
copy of TAL) so making it look right shouldn't be much more work than
with MKDoc.
  
Jean-Michel has said this about the idea:

  It might be dangerous to do a job on a technology we do not know very
  well - what if there is some critical feature missing when 80% of the
  job is done?

  If Burngreave people want to use Plone, let's go Plone with it's
  features and limitations all the way. Can't afford to do the job
  twice.
  
What do you think? I'm quite keen on the idea because I would get to
learn a new tool and I like working with Free software :-)

Chris

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Chris Croome                               <chris at webarchitects.co.uk>
web design                             http://www.webarchitects.co.uk/ 
web content management                               http://mkdoc.com/