Most people are aware of Zope as an application server for applications such as Plone, Launchpad etc. It also has an object oriented database that stores objects, which also includes standard files and folders.

I've often used this approached when consolidating old sites as it simplifies management. There is one security model, one database to backup and one management interface for all websites. Now when I move between different systems and servers, when Zope is up and running, I know all my sites are too. Users can then update their websites the usual way with ftp and webdav provided by Zope.

One such example is www.mekong-protected-areas.org an environmental and development site, which is now also hosted by Inigo.

If site specific theming is not an issue, uploading them into a Plone site via webdav or ftp will automatically integrate the html and images from the old site as indexed documents on a Plone site. This is usually the recommended option when organisations want to consolidate multiple legacy sites into one system. Old sites with a lot of documents are best suited for this, as immediately those documents will be full text indexed to be easily searched through Plone's LiveSearch feature.

An example of this kind of consolidation is www.apdip.net's old project sites and static html pages dating back from 2001.

Just moved apdip.net from servers in Bangkok to Inigo's server in Kuala Lumpur, remotely of course.

These kind of tasks are quite easy with standard unix tools such as ssh and tar. Assuming of course you're familiar with them (hint LPI Level 1 objectives are important). Setting it up was made even easier thought the use of FreeBSD jails, which allows me to host it on a virtual server which shares some of the host directories, but has it's own ip, own configuration and own third party (ports) software installed. This method shares kernel also, so it's very efficient.  This allows me to make very efficient use of my resources. As an SME it's very important to keep costs low, and if servers are able to do more, then it's better for the bottom line.

Unlike proprietary software, there are no silly things like registration keys, shared registry tied to physical server and other mechanisms that make it difficult to copy and move things. Every single software I need to duplicate it is available for free without any feature restrictions. Furthermore software versions are also not usually tied to specific OS releases. Meaning that I can run python 2.3 and zope 2.7 on FreeBSD 6.2 while the older server was on FreeBSD 5.3. I could replicate it on different Linux distributions too. All these kind of freedoms for the user, end up making things look amazingly easy to do compared to doing it on a platform such as Microsoft. Latest Plone 3.0 will run on FreeBSD 5,6 and upcoming 7, Fedora, Centos, Suse and even Windows.  Contrast this to Sharepoint 2007 which requires Windows 2003. Running Windows 2000? Tough.. pay for more licenses. Already have a Linux server? Tough, pay up for more licensing fees.

Eventually apdip.net will be moved to IOSN servers. Either way over 7 years worth of ICT4D material will continue be available with the same urls.