[Setup] Setting up an Intranet

[Larry Pitcher]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: setup-bounces at lists.plone.org 
> [mailto:setup-bounces at lists.plone.org] On Behalf Of Hadrian Cawthorne
> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 8:58 AM
> To: setup at lists.plone.org
> Subject: [Setup] Setting up an Intranet
> 
> Hi
> A bit of advice/thoughts needed here please.. :) and I'm very 
> Noob to Plone

Welcome!

Plone is designed for community / intranet / extranet use, so you're in the
right place. :-)

> 
> I'll be in receipt of three new fairly beefy servers very 
> soon for the purposes of upgrading the intranet in my rapidly 
> expanding department.
> Three servers, one for each of 3 different areas of study; 
> web, print and broadcast audio.
> 
> I've been playing around with Plone for a week or so, using a 
> testing server (with varying success) trying out different 
> packages. So I'd like to use Plone to get away from the 
> constant problems I've had over the years with Windows shares 
> as an intranet system, ie user rights, paths to servers etc 
> which students never seem to grasp!
> 
> I'd like it (my shiny new intranet) to be a place where 
> students can keep their files safely, access from anywhere 
> and have some other resources there too, such as 
> equipment/computer booking, module info, tech guides etc. We 
> also run web courses where traditionally we've been teaching 
> Dreamweaver, but now it's practically extinct in the online 
> news industry - so Plone would be good to introduce CMS for 
> websites to the students.
> 
> A few probs tho:
> 
> It seems like every time I get a collection of products on 
> the test server together that I think would be useful, I 
> start getting error pages ( e.g. portal_navigation attribute error)..

Yes, 3rd party products don't always "play well" together... Testing is a
must here. Also keep in mind that 3rd party and custom Products don't always
get updated in synch with the core of Plone...

> 
> Any thoughts on how I could set all this up?
> With 3 servers how could they all be integrated, if at all?

You don't really want three separate Plone servers in most cases. You can,
however, use the horsepower of three servers in creative ways. You could put
the Zope database on one machine (using ZEO) and use the other two servers
as front-ends. Zope (with Plone on top) would run on the two front-end
servers, with Apache or IIS proxying.

> I've also started testing Enfold Desktop which seems great, 
> IIS proxy would be useful but can't figure it out.

It sounds like you're running Windows Server, so you might think about using
Enfold Server. I'm using it for my intranet and it works great. It
integrates with Active Directory and it uses IIS as its proxy. It also uses
the built-in Windows method of converting strange things like Word docs into
searchable text so they can be indexed. The only thing I had to fiddle with
was redirecting all requests from port 80 to port 443.

> One last thing, I'm used to seeing gigs and gigs of files in 
> folders on my servers and it's a bit freaky to think of them 
> in one big database file, reassurance would be nice..

You don't _have_ to put all of your data in the database. That's just the
default. There are several methods of storing data on the file system (or an
SQL database). Search for ExternalFile, External Storage, etc.

Also, there is a whole community of users who have some special products to
handle multimedia content. Look for Tramline and related products.

There is also a large community of users in the academic community. Look for
EduPlone, connexions, etc. They have special Products for classes,
professors, etc.

Maybe I've brought you more questions than anwers, but Zope/Plone is a big
world, so there's lots to learn. Have fun!

Larry Pitcher

> 
> Thanks
> Hadrian Cawthorne
> 
> IT Officer
> University Of Sheffield
> Department of Journalism Studies
> Sheffield
> 
> http://www.shef.ac.uk/journalism
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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