Ever since becoming a full-time Web Developer I’ve been pretty busy with Plone related projects. While the largest of those is still ongoing and “super sekrit[tm]” I’ve also just recently completed the first stage of a new website that has actually seen the light of day already: the kodex international fashion calendar.

What I liked about this project, was that it has been approached by the client in a very ‘down-to-earth’ manner. This meant for one thing, that the feature set of the first version was to be limited (“do one thing well”), but also that we opted for a XP-like development model, with three iterations before going public. That was actually quite fun and the hands-on experience with the first two internal builds gave both the client and myself really valuable insights into what worked and what didn’t. In the end, this also meant, that ca. 30% of the code and templates went to the scrap heap, but the lessons learned by that process made it well worth it. You wouldn’t believe, for instance, how much planning and futzing went into the layout of the list of search results (and it’s still not optimal…).

Technically, this was also the first real-world project, that I’ve realised entirely with Five based Zope3 templates — and I swear, I ain’t never going back to the old, CMF-based way of templating. Eventhough the project had to be realised with limited time and a limited budget, I’m happy to report, that the component architecture of Zope3 has left me with small, manageable bits of functionality that I’m confident to revisit and build upon. You really need to have used that stuff in order to truly appreciate it…

Incidentially, the planning phase of the next version has already begun and I’m looking forward to the next round and to see how well I’ll be able to cope with my own code down the road…