Building Websites with Mambo

I have not used a CMS before, other than WordPress (that I consider to be a light-weight and focused CMS) so I decided to give Mambo a whirl but not without the help of this book. Unlike some other reviewers, the subtitle of my copy reads "A step by step tutorial" and so I read the book with that in mind. There are a couple of minor problems with the book. It was originally written in German and translated to English. The translation is not perfect and a couple of sentences required rereading but this is a minor matter. The other problem is that one of the most useful tutorials is on how to install the German language module which, for a book that has been translated into English, doesn't make a lot of sense to keep. It would have been my wish to use this valuable space to provide other tutorials. My review was focused on whether the book could help me download, install, set up, and use Mambo to build a Web site but unfortunately, it doesn't live up to my wishes. Some of the tutorials are good but for the most part, the largest chapter of the book reads more like a users guide than a tutorial and the last three chapters are for more advanced users. Although the book does work as a decent users guide and it does appear to be better than Mambo's web site, this book could have had better tutorials.

Hagen Graf's "Building Websites with Mambo" couldn't have arrived at a better time. "Building Websites with Mambo" gives you the complete tour much more clearly than does Mambo's built-in help which, to put it politely, appears to have been written by purely technical minds for other purely technical minds. If a content management system (CMS) makes sense for your site, and if you don't have time or resources to gather a really strong technical team, you'll find this book a helpful addition to the existing Mambo knowledge base. Graf's book defines what a CMS is and isn't, then moves on to the concepts central to this particular program. Designers, communicators and writers possessing a little technical savvy will appreciate the chapter on installing an experimental, fully working Mambo test site on a home or office computer. The book includes complete text versions of web links for reference sites, and the book's publisher has made available Mambo resource files on the support pages of its own site. For the Mambo neophyte, one of the most confusing things can be seeing the default home page for the first time -- especially if the newcomer has strong ideas on how the page should look and work. Graf realizes this and continues with a tour and rationale of why Mambo does what it does the way it does. He follows that with ideas on customization, ways to extend Mambo's capabilities with forums, photo galleries and the like, and finally deals with setting site styles such as colours and text. Today's reality is such that websites need the right blend of content and ease of use for visitors. The web used to be a fad. Now it's the way things are. The user is in charge and Mambo can take a starring role. The semi-technical person handed the job of webmaster who finds the task of wading through Mambo's interface and documentation an odious if necessary undertaking will find Graf's book a godsend. Terry Mc Elligott (...)

Building Websites with Mambo: A step by step tutorial. By Hagen Graf Publish Date: August 2005 Illustrated. 252 pages. Packt Publishing. $39.99. Review by David J. Myers Mambo is an incredibly powerful and versatile open source web content management system (CMS). It comes straight "out of the box" with lots of goodies to get you started, like content syndication (RSS), ad management, online help, language packs, news manager, a WYSIWYG content editor and so on. But if a feature you want is missing--like a shopping cart, for instance--chances are you can get it by downloading one of the many freely-available extensions. In recent years Mambo has gained widespread popularity across the globe. That's because Mambo (and its close cousin, Joomla) comes equipped with capabilities that equal or exceed those found in many proprietary content management systems, some costing as much as a small ransom. For this reason, among many others, Hagen Graf's "Building Websites with Mambo: A step by step tutorial" is a welcome addition to my expanding library of open source technology books. My five-year stint as development manager for two separate proprietary CMS projects gave me a bit of a leg up when I began evaluating open source CMS packages earlier this year. Even so, I must admit my surprise to discover such a wide variety of free CMS applications, ranging in quality from dismal to near-excellent. After countless (often frustrating) hours of testing, Mambo emerged as the clear winner for the kind of general purpose CMS I sought. Not only did Mambo seem to consistently work "as advertised" (unlike so many others), it appeared to enjoy the most prolific base of developers, testers and users. "Brilliant," I mused. "Now to march down to Powell's Technical Bookstore (Portland, Oregon's "temple of the geeks"), pick up a Mambo manual, and make myself a 'Mambo Master.'" Right. Blank stares greeted me as I queried Powell's employees as to which Mambo CMS book they could honestly recommend. One of them kindly consulted the store's database to discover that, indeed, a Mambo Open Source (MOS) guide did exist. And you'll read it in German, thank you. "Wunderbar," I moaned. Even though I'd lived in Germany for three years, the rigors of youthful sloth prevented me from learning German well enough to actually read it. Yet another little regret to add to my growing pile of psychic afflictions. I quickly discovered that, although countless guides explain the workings of general-purpose free/open source software (FOSS), such as Linux, more specialized software--blogs, wikis, other CMS applications and so on--often required devotees to scrounge around the Internet for help. Yet curling up with a good software manual is sometimes just what the "doctor prescribes" in order to reach the next level of expertise with a particular technology. For precisely this reason I was overjoyed to discover the availability of Hagen Graf's book. Written in English, no less! "Building We

Hagen makes this book rock! He hides most of the complexity of Mambo and describes it clearly. The specific features of this book surprised me are * Even a newbie can run and configure Mambo * Gives a clear conception of Mambo Administration * Describes Modules and Extensions in a way that beginners can understand it easily * He shows how to develop your own extensions * Shows how you can use Mambo to meet your requirements This book makes Mambo useful for all. Very handy. I really like it.

This book is a great resource, especially if you are just getting started with Mambo. It is a little expensive for the amount of information in the book, but it will be worth your time and a lot easier than looking the information on the Internet.