ProductLineExplanation

Why a "Product Line"?

A fair question. Basically, on the mailing lists, there were discussions about what kind of user management system should we have. There are two main ones that come up in a membership oriented site.

Case 1: Users with Folders

In the default PTK, as of this writing, users get a folder in which to store their stuff. this provides a user centric site orientation.

Case 2: Users without Folders

In this scheme, all user data is stored in the user object. users may or may not be able to contribute content, but if they do, the site admin will provide a means for them to add content to specific areas in the site. www.libc.org is an example of one such site currently in development.

The First Break

I decided that since the easier of the two to generalize was the Users without Folders scheme, I'd make that one first. Essentially, to do this, I built upon the seperation started by Kevin. Membership provides the basics, the base classes. The "subproducts" are ZClass implementations of Login User objects, and the interfaces to make use of them.