Tuesday 19 July 2005 1:01:34 pm

Salim,
As far as I know, many of the ez Systems staff are on holiday at the moment, so you may need to wait a bit for a complete answer. Until then, I'll try to comment.
One thing to note about EZP is the fact that entirely new datatypes and new content classes can be created relatively easily, with their own behaviours.
Many of the requirements you've mentioned are 'almost' there in the sense that a competent EZP developer would be able to implement them with ease as the API hooks are there waiting to be used. For example....
'more by author' would be very easy as it is a simple fetch looking for the Owner of the content... but as far as I know there isn't a ready made template component which does this 'out of the box', but probably just a few minutes to set-up.
Review / Rating: as above. EZP has poll building components which could concievably be used for this.
"Readers also enjoyed..." again, fetch other Comments owned by this Comment Owner.
Previews in different styles is present in 3.6, but may not be in the way you've described. I believe this would require some significant development.
Sharing content: if you mean ALL content (but filterable by user role) then 'Yes' in that several sites can be driven from a single database of content... with different templates, styles etc. If you mean only the occassional item of content and not via RSS then it is more complex but have a look at the Content Server at http://ez.no/solutions/solutions_and_software/content_server
Pagination: I would need to research this.
Adds / Javascript code: EZP can accept literal snippets of code. Server-side code can also be integrated by an EZP developer.
Directory: As far as I'm aware this has be done on several EZP sites, but there may not be a ready made template in the standard download.
subscription/gating: This would probably require an extention.
Link manager: standard feature.
Archival: The work-flow system could be used here.
Search: There are several search engine options various levels of complexity.
Polls/Surveys: Polls - yes as standard. Surveys (multiple questions), not really but Polls functionality and the fact that you are able to design custom, data-collecting forms would provide much of the functionality required to develop surveys (with reports etc.).
Newsletter: not fully but a simple solution can be achieved with a combination of the notifications system and workflow.
Sitemap: very easy... standard feature.
Versioning: yes, standard feature. Fully configurable how many versions are preserved. Not just an edit undo.
There is a garbage can where you can go and get back 'deleted' content.
Checkout: Yes, standard feature. The system informs the user that the content is being edited. They can choose to create a new draft.
Static content: Yes, but some content may change often so it may not be appropriate to try to make certain pages static.
Print article: either via CSS or use the included PDF generator (batch or on-the-fly) to allow any page to be downloaded as a PDF.
Watch for new content: Standard - Notifications system.
Search Engine friendly URLs: Standard - optional global setting for the site. Also, various options for redirection , url rewriting, aliases etc.
Metadata: vie site-wide settings, content class definitions, templates and their overrides etc. There is also Keyword associations (shared keywords can be used to automatically relate content) between content.
Protection from search-bots: Yes.

Hope everyone will forgive me if they see any inaccuracies.

The Web Application Service Provider

Wednesday 20 July 2005 11:05:18 pm

<b>Just a little comment on print layout:</b>

Print article: either via CSS or use the included PDF generator (batch or on-the-fly) to allow any page to be downloaded as a PDF.

eZ Publish also has it's own print mode (through layout/set/print). This allows you to configre your completely own printable versions of everything, in the same way as the rest of the site.

<b>About the speed issues:</b>
There has been lots of discussions about this, but I haven't seen anyone of them concluded with anything. In my experience eZ needs a good server, and preferrably one that's not shared with many other sites.

eZ also needs proper cache setup to have decent speed results.

You might want to check out a collection of benchmarks tests here: http://ez.no/community/forum/install_configuration/ez_publish_performance

And be aware that the results are presented both with and without precaching, so be sure to check out the right results :)

Thursday 21 July 2005 2:16:45 am

In the case of ezPublish, you suggest that most of what I want can be done, but will undoubtedly require some custom programming -- exactly what I'm trying to avoid; hence my weeks of evaluating all these OS solutions against my business requirements.

In most cases what Luc means is custom template writing. This is not PHP programming but simply a customization of the templates in the system which you most probably want to do anyway.