how websites are perceived by their visitors and the basic ways in which websites can be constructed.

From Zope2 book:

 

How a user use website:

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In general, many website visitors think about navigation in terms of moving “from page-to-page” within a website. When they click a hyperlink, their browser transports them to a new page. When they hit their browser’s back button, they are returned to the last page they visited, and so on.

 

 

Static contents:

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Some websites are static. A static website stores its information in files on a web server. Each file then represents a complete page on the website. This may seem like a simple and efficient way of creating a website; however, updating the information within those pages becomes a problem when the site consists of more than a few pages, and the pages, or parts of the pages, need to be updated frequently.

 

The layout of text and images that are displayed in a user’s web browser when the user visits a website are commonly composed in a simple language known as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). When a user visits a typical website, a chunk of text that is “marked-up” with formatting in HTML is transferred between the website and the user’s browser. The browser interprets the chunk of text and displays text and images to the user. The chunk of text which is transferred is typically referred to as a page.

 

To achieve this, the static website requires a person with a privileged level of access (sometimes termed the webmaster) to manually create and update the site’s content.

Typically, this is done by editing a set of text-based files on the web server (the machine that runs the website), where each file represents a single page. In some cases, a site-wide change to the “look-and-feel” of a static website requires that the webmaster visit and update each and every file that comprises the website.

 

Somewhere down the line, smart webmasters begin to think to themselves, “Wow, this is a lot of work. It’s tedious and complicated, and I seem to be making a lot of mistakes. Computers are really good at doing tedious and complicated tasks, and they don’t make very many mistakes. I bet my web server computer could automatically do a lot of the work I now do manually.” And he would be right.

 

At this point, the webmaster is ready to be introduced to web applications. It is in this area where Zope’s strength and power becomes clear.

 

 

Dynamic contents managed by web application.

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In a dynamically-constructed website, the webmaster is not required to visit the site “page-by-page” in order to update its content or style. Instead, he is able to instruct the web server to generate the site’s HTML pages dynamically, where each page is made up of different bits of content. While each bit of content is unique, each can nevertheless appear in several pages if so instructed by the web server. In this way, the webmaster is able to create a common “look and feel” for the set of pages that make up his site. The software on the web server that generates these pages is the web application.

 

A web application is a computer program that users invoke by using a web browser to contact a web server via the Internet. Users and browsers are typically unaware of the difference between a web server that fronts a statically-built website and one that fronts a web application. But unlike a static website, a web application creates its “pages” dynamically, or on-the-fly, upon request. A website that is dynamically- constructed uses an a computer program to provide its content. These kinds of dynamic applications can be written in any number of computer languages.

 

Web application server

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A framework that allows people to construct a web application is often called a web application server, or sometimes just an application server. Zope is a web application server, as are competing products like WebSphere, JBoss, and (to some extent) SAP NetWeaver.

 

Zope is a web application server, which is not a web application in itself; rather it is framework that allows people to construct web applications

Benefits of using a WAS:

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Many application servers allow you to perform some of the following tasks:

 

Present Dynamic Content – You may tailor your web site’s presentation to its users and provide users with search features. Application servers allow you to serve dynamic content and typically come with facilities for personalization, database integration, content indexing, and searching.

 

Manage Your Web Site – A small web site is easy to manage, but a web site that serves thousands of documents, images, and files requires heavy-duty management tools. It is useful to be able to manage your site’s data, business logic, and presentation from a single place. An application server can typically help manage your content and presentation in this way.

 

Build a Content Management System – A content management system allows non-technical editors to create and manage content for your website. Application servers provide the tools with which you can build a content management system.

 

Build an E-Commerce Application – Application servers provide a framework in which sophisticated e-commerce applications can be created.

 

Securely Manage Contributor Responsibility – When you deal with more than a handful of web users, security becomes very important. You must be able to safely delegate tasks to different classes of system users. For example, folks in your engineering department may need to be able to manage their web pages and business logic, designers may need to update site templates, and database administrators need to manage database queries. Application servers typically provide a mechanism for access control and delegation.

 

Provide Network Services – You may want to produce or consume network services. A network service-enabled web site must to be able to accept requests from other computer programs. For example, if you’re building a news site, you may wish to share your news stories with another site; you can do this by making the news feed a network service. Or perhaps you want to make products for sale on your site automatically searchable from a product comparison site. Application servers offer methods for enabling these kinds of network services.

 

Integrate Diverse Systems – Your existing content may be contained in many places: relational databases, files, separate web sites, and so on. Application servers typically allow you to present a unified view of your existing data by integrating diverse, third-party systems.

 

Provide Scalability – Application servers allow your web applications to scale across as many systems as necessary to handle the load demands of your sites.

 

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The Zope application server allows you to perform all of these tasks

1. present dynamic contents: acquisition mechinemic and content/present/logic objects

2. management website: ZMI

3. build a CMS -> page template, ZPT. TTW,

4. a Ecommerce application?

5. Securely Manage Contributor Responsibility: roles and security.

6. network service: A network service-enabled web site must to be able to accept requests from other computer programs. ZVH, others services

6. Integration: RDB adapter,

7, Provide scalability: ZEO