If it were a worthless pile of
!@#$ it wouldnt be around and no one would use it. Its good for some things. Like all software it was not designed to do everything in the world. Python does help but is not required. Zope, is one of the oldest CMSs and has a lot of advantages. All data is an ACL-enabled object that has a complete reverseable undo history. There are countless well tested packages for Plone. It does have performance limitations but you are talking about very big web sites that get millions of hits a day. I beleive it is a good choice for small self-contained sites such as the one Alan described. jmz