Mambo

[stiney51]

Ok, I'm looking to design a webpage for my housing association, but am pretty much learning as I go here. My background is in design and graphics and I know some html (enough to make me dangerous).

I had a friend who works as a web developer suggest using Mambo to build the website because it allows easy features and a backend to have others update the website (calendar of events, messages to the homeowners etc.) without me needing to be involved at that point.

Has anyone had any experience in using this? Am I jumping into the deep end before learning to swim? Any ideas of another plan of attack?

[Jacorre]

I haven't used Mambo on any of my sites but I have played around with it. I don't think it's that user friendly with it's interface. It will take some time getting used to the admin controls. It does have themes to use, or you could design your own but it looks difficult. I think WordPress looks alot easier.

[Alex McKee]

I suggest Textpattern. It's a fairly steep learning curve but it's a powerful content publishing system.

They have a friendly community: Textpattern Support Forum

I didn't like Mambo when I tried it out. In any case, I believe that Joomla considered more advanced (Joomla is similar to Mambo and produced by some of the same developers).

[LemonTree]

My studio, and particularily myself make extensive use of Mambo and it's slightly more developed counterpart Joomla.

Both products are outstanding and the support is unbelievable for any product let alone a GPU product (it's free).

It does operate a little differently than other CMS systems, but we have found that if you can conceive of anything... someone else has already coded, packaged, and submitted the solution... The entire system remains open source and highly flexible.

Templating is a little complex, but there are literally thousands out there that you can make use of. If you have a background in design/graphics, you'll have no trouble at all.

If you have any more questions, feel free to visit our site http://www.notjustgraphics.net which coincidentally is based on Joomla.

Mike.
Not Just Graphics
info@notjustgraphics.net

[stiney51]

Thanks Mike. It's a little encouraging hearing that type of feedback. I'm plugging ahead with this project using Mambo. I'll let everyone know how it goes.

By the way, I took at look at your site. From a design & layout standpoint it looks great, but it took a little bit to figure out what it is your company does. You might want to work on some more content or an bulleted list on the home page. Most people who end up on your website probably already know some of what you do, but for those who don't it might be good to drive the idea home right away.

I know you weren't looking for a critique, but I wanted to say thanks anyway and give you some feedback.

[LemonTree]

You may also want to consider Joomla which for all intents and purposes is identical... a little more than a year ago the mambo development group split and Joomla was born... it is proving to be better supported... there have been very few core updats to Mambo since, though it is widely supported through a user network.

As for your critique... i appreciate your comments... and agree with you. I have made a temporary remedy based on your feedback and will finesse it properly in the next couple of days.

Thanks again...

Mike.
Not Just Graphics

Great discussion here all, I was also debating what CMS to use for my upcoming site, and I was stuck between Mambo and Drupal (anyone heard of this?). Both look like Greek to me in terms of my understanding, but I am reassured to know that there is a huge user community out there willing to help. What I was interested in was whether CMS' like Mambo and Joomla can handle things like BioRust has, such as "User Stats" upon log in and things of that nature. (For example, when we log in, there is like a "User Info" panel which tracks what I've done, how many posts I've made, how many BioRust Points I have etc.) My upcoming website is very, very heavily statistics driven, and tracking user behavior/providing the user with metrics on various items is critical to how the site functions. Does anyone know of whether these CMS' can handle those kinds of things?

[Bub]

I had this same problem a few months ago. I tried about 5 different CMS's to see whaich I liked the most. I must say the one that had the most features and the easiest to use was Textpattern (linked a couple posts up). It seemed to be the most user friendly while still allowing for a nice looking website easily.

[stiney51]

I eneded up installing Joomla and looking through everything, (the size of the community of users and all) it seems like pretty much anything you want to do is out there already and available to be installed on the site.

For someone like me who is lazy doesn't know how to write code, it's a godsend.

[xKillswitchx]

Sorry replying to an old thread, but might help someone in the future.
I've used Joomla for quite awhile, and just recently stopped using it (I'm coding my own CMS).

Out of all CMS' I have used, it is the most powerful, but also one of the biggest resource hogs. If you have shared hosting, Joomla/Mambo is not the way to go (frontend might go slightly slow, but wait till you get into the admin panel, it will barely move).

If you have someone to tell you what the admin panel does and all your options, you should pick up on Joomla in no time at all. I admit, when I first played with it, all the options confused the hell out of me, but its pretty straight forward.
If you still need help with it, pm me.

Templating Joomla is by far one of the easiest systems that I have ever done. You dont use Smarty or your typical {template_tag} to theme it, nor do you have to edit 40 different template or .tpl files. Instead, you edit one css file , and the main theme file in a simple textarea. It does require custom tags, which are basically like includes or functions <?php moswhatever(); ?>.

I found creating a theme in Drupal and other notable powerful CMS' to be extremely diffecult, and much worth paying someone else to deal with.

The support is incredible, I often sat in the forums for hours helping others out. Its an easy system to catch onto. The only issue I have is that its rather large, with over 2,000 files. Makes backing up a pain.

If you understand Joomla and know how to work well with it, you will find the CMS is nothing but a workhorse for your site.