[Evangelism] Re: "Top 15 Questions..." Final Draft

Alexander Limi limi at plone.org
Tue Apr 14 06:28:51 UTC 2009


On Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:23:14 +0200, Chris Barnes  
<chris at txbarnes.com> wrote:

> In fact, this is my main complaint with Plone in general.  It might very  
> well be easy to use for the end users - but to run the entire system  
> requires a person who is well versed in Zope/python.

To run it — I'd say no. To customize it, absolutely. There's "use" as in  
"end user", and "use" as in develop for / customize. We are very much  
aware that the current approach where Plone straddles multiple large  
pieces of infrastructure (Zope 2, Zope 3 and the CMF), is not ideal. The  
other option would be to dump our current user base and restart  
development in pure Zope 3 (or something else), which was an option that  
was deemed too risky.

> I'm a computer administrator by profession - and *I* haven't been able  
> to get a Plone site up and running yet.  What does that say for the  
> "average user"? Iow, the kb needed to run & maintain a Plone system is  
> WAY under stated.

With the latest advancements in configuration and setup tools (buildout  
being among the major changes here), the core part of this problem will be  
in much better shape than it was a year ago. The main problem as I see it  
at the moment is that not all documentation is current, but the team is  
working on updating the documentation to the current state of the art.

> I have to be honest - I am close to giving up on Plone.

That's sad to hear. Let us know if there are specific things we can help  
with.

There are lots of things we want to make better about Plone — the good  
news is that the team is acutely aware of these issues, and everyone is  
pulling in the same direction to get them fixed. It just takes a bit of  
time, as everything does in a project with a large installed user base,  
where you need to care about upgrades and compatibility.

-- 
Alexander Limi · http://limi.net





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