Zero to Website

When I was teaching Web Development students to use Zope and then Plone I used to have a lab called The Zero to Website Challenge. Students were given a weeks worth of class time minus enough time for them to present the site to me and the rest class, this was usually 4 and 5 hours of design and build time. They worked in teams of 2 to 4 students that I usually chose for them. In most cases the first hour was spent organizing the team and picking a topic. Invariably the good students made really good sites and the slackers made sites that were good enough. I often said that I was willing to take on any comer at that time (2003 - 2005) in a challenge match where they picked the theme, the operating system and most of the rules and still make a better site in less time. I'm not so sure I'd be willing to make that dare now.

That's the impetus for this entry. Tonight at the TCPC Web SIG meeting Curt built a new Drupal site in about an hour for his Word Boot Camp event at the end of March. Drupal and Joomla are as easy to setup as Zope/Plone and easier for people who are proficient in PHP and MySQL but not Zope.