Chapter 1: Introduction Zope's Content Management Framework (CMF) allows you to manage your organizations digital assets. The CMF lets you: * Create and edit all kinds of content. * Manage your content using custom business logic and workflow rules. * Deliver your content in a flexible, powerful way. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach, the CMF allows you to build your own content management system that meets your needs. You can use the CMF to create all kinds of content management systems including: * Intranets - share knowledge and automate business processes within your organization. * Portals - deploy personalized content and leverage visitor contributed content. You will learn how to use and customize the CMF in the chapters that follow. CMF Content A central idea of the CMF is that all kinds of digital assets (including articles, reports, graphics, multi-media, etc.) are treated as "content" objects. Content objects all share certain features including: remote editing, security, workflow, and customizable look and feel. The CMF provides standard tools to edit and manage content. You can create content through the web using a standard web browser, or you can edit it remotely with desktop tools. You can create custom content types to fit with your organization's needs. For example, you might want to create a custom purchase order content type. The CMF promotes distributed authorship. Different categories of users from managers to anonymous site visitors can create and edit content. All content functions are controlled by security and workflow rules. This allows you to construct a content management system that meets your organization's needs. You can delegate some responsibilities while retaining control. CMF Services In addition to content, the other central idea of the CMF is "services". Services provide centralized management of site features. For example, the workflow service configures business process rules that govern how content is developed and deployed. Here's a brief overview of key CMF services: Membership The membership service controls how users join your site. For example, some sites allow visitors to become contributing members, while other sites draw authentication information from LDAP databases. The membership service controls both authentication and user data. Workflow The workflow service lets you configure business rules that govern how content is developed and deployed. You can tailor workflow to control how content is routed between different people as it is developed. For example, a news article might be created by an author, and then submitted to an editor for review. You can configure different workflow rules for different types of content. Security Zope provides a unified security architecture that controls all site functions. You can easily tailor the security policy for different content types, and different locations in your site. You can also delegate safely security policy maintenance so that managers can set the security policy in their part of the site. Undo The Undo service allows you to recover from mistakes. All site changes (including changes to logic, presentation, and content components) can be undone. Zope uses transactions that ensure that the site never gets into an inconsistent state. History and Versions Zope provides a history and versions facility to content. This allows you to keep track of content versions. You can track changes in content over time and check point different content revisions. Look and Feel The CMF provides a unified look and feel service. This service allows you to provide a consistent look and feel as well as personalize a site for different users. You can also reuse content with different look and feel. Metadata The metadata service allows you to configure content metadata. Metadata categorizes content by keeping track of attributes such as title, author, last modified date, key words, etc. By using metadata you can easily categorize and search your content. Search Zope provides a powerful and fast search services. The search service allows you to locate content based on full text search as well as metadata. The search service can be used to build reports as well as to provide search services to site visitors. Conclusion The Zope CMF gives you the tools you need to build a powerful content management system that meets your needs. In the following chapters you'll learn more about CMF content and services.