Tim Yang's Geek Blog

Tuesday February 15

Mambo CMS

I've been playing around with Mambo CMS for an idea for an online magazine. There are softwares specifically for zines like SPIP, Krang and Props. But they have far poorer documentation and support than Mambo so I've had to avoid them. Mambo's administrative structure is extremely similar to the nuke CMSes. Instead of modules, Mambo has components. For blocks, Mambo has modules. And for themes, Mambo has templates. So it is easy, but extremely time consuming to configure. Mambo has fewer modules and blocks than the nukes because of its relative newness, but it already has support for common softwares like Gallery, PHPBB and Vbulletin.

Mambo is also not quite as easy as the nukes to template (they require just uploading of CSS and image files) but it has third-party toolbars that can be installed in Dreamweaver and Golive to aid the template construction.

Like the nukes, Mambo seems to be an all-round CMS. But for some reason I feel it's better suited to a magazine/portal than the nukes. It's also more fashionable and whatever is fashionable in web development will have a snowball effect in the development of add-ons. For instance, Mambo has a component/module set called Mambozine made for zine construction, which although hasn't been released yet, seems to be taking Mambo in the direction I want it to. But Mambo already has numerous components that can be used and put together to create a good zine.

http://mamboserver.com/

Comments

> But they have far poorer documentation and support than Mambo so I’ve had to avoid them.

Mambo is perfect but I do not agree for SPIP ! The documentation - in several languages - is very important. Forums and mailing-lists are very active.

- http://www.spip.net

Posted by Helveto on Feb 19, 05 | 8:42 pm

I’ve read the documentation for SPIP in English. It’s not a native English document. It’s a translation of the French document into English and it’s quite tiring to read because it is not a perfect translation. I realise that the forum is active with lots of English speakers, but I’d rather work with a CMS with good documentation than to have to ask for help for many things.

Posted by Tim on Feb 20, 05 | 1:22 am

Hi
I am a developer based in India and have looked at several cms approaches. Then I happened to do a few cms projects in which i created one of my own. I am a newbie to open source but whatever i saw on Mambo was ok but still I found them a little okward when it comes to maintaining real ezines or stuff like that.
I would like to have a feedback on my approach. If we could possibly meet on the net (i am india GMT 530) and i could guide u thru a couple of my systems, it would give me insights into the cms community.
Regards
Sidharth

Posted by Sidharth Walavalkar on Mar 07, 05 | 10:28 pm

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Tuesday February 15

Mambo CMS

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