Joomla! is an award winning Content Management System(CMS) with a wide range of features. It’s a prolific CMS which is suitable for designing and maintaining any type of websites. Joomla has a modular architecture, providing the users with lots of options for extensibility. Apart from the fabulous modules, it is also well known for strong security, templating system, extensive community support and the authorization framework.

There are many extensions available for Joomla! like plug-ins and modules to extend the functionality of Joomla!. These extensions provide – further options for customization, enhancing the functionality as well as ease of administration.

You might want to integrate technologies such as Flash into Joomla!, as it provides great features for creating stunning graphics, interactive games, animated objects and alike to add a new flavor to your site.

The book, Joomla! with Flash, is aimed at explaining how to use Flash objects with Joomla! content with minimal efforts and maximum output.

Book Details

Language English
Paperback 260 pages [191mm x 235mm]
Release date October 2009
ISBN 1847198244
ISBN 13 978-1-847198-24-2
Author(s) Suhreed Sarkar
Topics and Technologies Content Management, PHP/MySQL, Open Source, Joomla!

Highlights

This book enables you to build interactive and content-rich web sites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4.

• You can build stunning web site(s) and integrate Flash objects into Joomla!
• Joomla! with Flash gives you step-by-step guidelines on how to create stunning photo galleries with Flash transition and animation effects
• The books also includes explanation on, how to use interactive Flash-based maps, animations, videos, charts, MP3 players, logos, headers, and banners in Joomla!-based web sites
• Contains easy to follow guides with enriched screenshots for better understanding.
• After going through the book, you can renovate your Joomla! based web site into an interactive, feature-rich multimedia site

A Brief Walk Through

The book starts with introducing the reader to the different types of Flash objects and various tools that will be helpful for developing web sites based on Flash and Joomla!. Then, the author gives a detailed explanation on how to use Flash-based image slide shows in Joomla and display them at different positions on the site.

By using the ‘random image’ module, you can implement a slide show in no time. The explanation is easily understandable. As, each step is enriched by screenshots, comprehending the text becomes much easier.

Simialarly, you will learn to use the RokSlideShow, one of the popular slideshow modules for Joomla!

This extensions helps you in integrating a slide show with options for dynamic image resizing, captions, loading progressbar, titles and more. Apart from these, you will also be able to set transition and other eye catching effects to further customize your slide show. Chapter 2 also focuses on showing Flash based movies in Joomla! articles/content.

Chapter 3 gives you an introduction to the built-in menus and navigation in Joomla! and then illustrates the use of two extensions, Flash Floating Menu and Super Web Flash for using Flash based menus in Joomla!

The book also covers other related extensions for customizing the flash menus based on your need.

Other intriguing stuff like building photo galleries using Flash into Joomla! based sites, building interactive Flash based maps, and charts, tickers, logos, headers is clearly explained in the book to meet the needs of all kinds of audience. This book also focuses mainly on how to embed Joomla! content into a Flash sites and how to troubleshoot your applications to overcome the most common problems in Joomla!.

What you will learn from this book

Create Flash objects and choose some popular flash tools for working with them

Improve the overall design of your site by learning to use Flash templates and tickers in Joomla!

Build stunning photo galleries with Flash animation effects and display photos on your Joomla! web site from a Flickr account using third-party extensions for Joomla!

Embed and display flash movies inside Joomla! contents using a simple video flash player

Create attractive Flash-based menus for your Joomla! web site

Display interactive Flash maps on a Joomla! web site using YOS amMap extension

Transform your Joomla! site into a streaming media site using Jvideo! extension to embed videos in Joomla! contents

Create mind maps based on your Joomla! site’s structure with the help of Joom!FreeMind component

Customize your Joomla! template to display Flash logo, header, and banners

Display Joomla! contents in Flash objects using amfPHP and J-AMFPHP extension for Joomla!

Maintain and troubleshoot your Joomla! and Flash web site

Approach

This book is a fast-paced step-by step-guide. It is loaded with examples and lots of illustrations showing configurations and their results on the screen.

Who this book is written for

If you are a Joomla! web developer who wants to integrate Flash into your web sites, then this book is for you. Knowledge of Joomla! and basic knowledge of Flash is assumed.

Joomla with Flash, build stunning, content-rich, and interactive websites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4 is definitely a must have if, you are planning to build and enhance you Joomla! based web site with Flash.

Check out Joomla! with Flash at PACKT Publishing

Note: Keep track of this blog to get a chance to grab an exclusive copy of this book.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

When it comes to life online, we all use content management systems in one way or another: blogging, building websites, maintaining websites, marketing them, etc.
If we are not web experts, we usually just use software tools to develop websites. We may not even know what it is that powers the websites—what is actually doing the back-end work. Now it’s time to discover Content Management Systems (or CMS systems), and which ones are used most frequently.

I came across an interesting study about who are the leaders in open source content management systems market in the year of 2008.
The study was just released to the public and it was conducted by Ric Sheves from Water & Stone web development company (cool name, by the way). The company specializes in open source content management systems, particularly Drupal, Joomla!, Mambo, osCommerce and WordPress. Ric lives in Bali, Indonesia (talking about working from cool places).

At 50 pages, there is a significant amount of data in this study that should be of use to developers or to anyone who is looking to commit to a web publishing system. You don’t want to bet on a dead horse, do you?

But first let’s see WHAT is a content management system.

According to Wikipedia a content management system is:

…a computer software used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files,electronic documents, and Web content.A web content management system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.

Because the theme of this site is web software (software which runs on a web server and in a browser – not desktop software) we will concentrate on web content management systems. And because we do like free things (who doesn’t?) we will present this study which took in consideration only the open source web content management systems (and only the publication-oriented CMSs, not e-commerce like osCommerce and not enterprise portals like LifeRay). Commercial or hosted products are excluded too.

Below are more details about this study.

—————————————————————————————————————

This whole exercise began by brainstorming through various methods of assessing popularity and adoption rates. While there are a number of indicators, there is no standardized metric to gauge market share in this particular segment — there is simply no way to get an accurate fix on how many systems are actually in use on the web right now.

For this survey the research results were broken down into two broad categories:
• Rate of Adoption
• Brand Strength

In each of the areas, they used a multi-faceted approach, assessing a wide variety of measures to identify broad trends and patterns from which we can draw conclusions with some
degree of confidence. Among the many metrics they sampled are a number of non-traditional indicators, such as Twitter Prominence and Social Bookmarking statistics.

Rate of Adoption
The team began their examination of the open source CMS market by attempting to measure the relative rates of adoption of the systems in the sample set. For reasons discussed below, direct evidence alone is not sufficient to allow them to draw firm conclusions.

As a result, they were forced to look at a variety of metrics in hopes of building a more complete picture of the current state of the market:

Downloads

Installations

Third Party Support

- Developers

- Publishers

All these three metrics are explained in details in the study.

Brand Strength
In this section the team turned to assessing the intangible — brand strength. Measuring the brand strength of open source products presents challenges: not only is this particular market lacking in maturity and commercial sophistication, but in general there is also no easy way to establish the value of the brand associated with noncommercial products used by a geographically diverse audience.

In response to this challenge, they casted their net wide and tried to capture a broad sampling of data (including many Web 2.0 indicators).
Then grouped the results into the following categories:

Search engine visibility

- lnbound Links

- Search Engine Ranking on Relevant Keywords

Popularity metrics

Evidence of mindshare

- Search engine query volume

- Twitter prominence

- New & blog mentions

- Demo site traffic

- Fan Activity

Evidence of mindshare

- Awards received

- User ratings

- Social bookmarking activity

All these four categories are explained in details in the study.

Conclusions of the study
Based on the data derived during the survey the conclusions were broken down in two categories:

• Who are The Market Leaders (who are taking the crown)
• Systems to Watch (who are in danger of going down)

Who are The Market Leaders(who are taking the crown)
The data gathered during this survey makes a persuasive case for the identity of the Top 3 leaders in the open source CMS market. In almost every metric, the Top 3 spots were held by
Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress. Moreover, not only did these systems consistently finish at the top of the comparisons, in many cases the gap between those three systems and the rest of
the pack was significant. In key Adoption and Brand metrics these three names showed not just strength, but dominance.

Historical search performance

Note:
• Joomla! took the lead in this metric early on and has never looked back.
• Q2 of 2008 sees WordPress narrowing the gap on Joomla! and, at the close of the period, pulling away from Drupal.
• Drupal shows consistent growth over the past four years.
• Note that news reference volume (the lower portion of the chart, above) shows WordPress consistently outperforming both Joomla! and Drupal.

Project site reach

Note:
• WordPress enjoys a clear lead in U.S. market reach in 2008.
• Note the back and forth battle between Joomla! and Drupal — with Drupal enjoying a slight (though not sustained) advantage.

Project site page views

Note:
• WordPress moved ahead of Joomla! at the end of the first Quarter of 2008.
• Drupal appears to be narrowing the gap with both WordPress and Joomla!.

Project site visitors
Google Trends

Note:
• Consistent with the Alexa stat, above, WordPress moved ahead of Joomla! at the end of the first Quarter of 2008.
• The gap between WordPress and Drupal is increasing.
• The gap between Drupal and Joomla! is narrowing (slightly).

Compete

Note:
• Wordpress continues to increase their lead.
• Drupal and Joomla! wage a close battle, but notably, Drupal is in the lead the entire period.

See also the chart immediately below (slicing the data for the same period but this time analyze it for number of visits).

Note:
• WordPress retains a significant lead.
• Drupal and Joomla! fight a pitched battle but note that Drupal takes the leads in early 2008 and is now opening a gap over Joomla!

At this point in time, the battle for market dominance has yet to be settled. Indeed, it rather looks like the battle is just about to heat up!
WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal share a significant lead over the other products in the open source CMS market.
This is not expected to change in the near to medium term. Whether one will emerge as the market leader remains to be seen.

Systems to Watch (who are in danger of going down)
The survey revealed a number of systems that deserve to be watched in the near to medium term. Several of the systems in their survey group showed significant weakening in market share over time and may be threatened. Several other systems show signs of weakness and forced the team to ask whether their day has passed. At least two of the newer systems in their survey showed increased brand recognition and engagement together with signs of improved market share.

Below are discussed briefly each of the three categories:

• Projects at risk?
• A closing window of opportunity?
• New names worth watching

Projects At Risk?

The results obtained for this group of systems are cause for concern regarding their market share and ongoing relevance.
Below, the team looked briefly at:

• CMSMadeSimple
• Mambo
• php-Nuke
• phpWebsite

CMSMadeSimple
CMSMadeSimple fared worse than possibly any other system in the survey. It was a laggard in the vast majority of the categories discussed. Still there were bright spots for the system, user
ratings placed the system right in the middle of the pack and the system does manage some visibility in the search indices. Given a poor showing in both the Adoption and Brand categories of the survey, this project has a difficult struggle ahead.

Mambo
The appearance of a direct competitor — Joomla! — in late 2005 corresponds with the Mambo project’s steep decline in market share. Despite numerous changes in the Mambo team over the last several years, the trend has not reversed, or even slowed. While the survey showed some promising signs for Mambo, like increased user ratings and continued brand strength, the mindshare numbers indicate that Mambo is not succeeding in capturing user attention. And recently another project spawned from Mambo: miaCMS (core developers deciding to step away from the Mambo Foundation and start an independent project). This could only spell even more trouble for Mambo.

php-Nuke
Once the powerhouse of the open source CMS movement (what days were those!), php-Nuke’s early mover advantage has not translated into staying power. Increasing competition over the years has chipped away at php-Nuke’s market share. While the numbers seem to indicate that the project maintains significant brand strength, one has to question whether that data reflects the reality of today, or is merely a testament to past glory.

phpWebsite
The survey showed few encouraging signs for phpWebsite and it is hard to put a positive spin on the data as it relates to the project. The system was a laggard in nearly every category excepting Alexa ranking and search engine visibility. Real weakness across the entire range of mindshare metrics presents a major challenge for this project.

A Closing Window of Opportunity?
Survey data indicated that several systems were struggling to maintain market share.

In the section they looked briefly at:

• b2evolution
• MediaWiki
• Plone
• SPIP

b2evolution
b2evolution’s use of a system badge45 on it’s sites and the inclusion of the name in RSS feeds brings b2evolution a prominence in several metrics and certainly shows the advantages of using your distros to build brand. Unfortunately, aside from strength in that area, the system shows mediocre performance across a wide range of other metrics. There is one notable bright spot: User ratings at OpenSourceCMS.com place b2evolution in the number four position — right behind Joomla!. Between solid brand strength and good user satisfaction, the system has the possibility to rise in prominence, but will they capitalize?

Plone
Plone shows strong performance in both fansites and in books in print. A look at traffic patterns, mentions and queries, however, shows that the system’s market share has been in a slide since mid-2007. Goodwill indicators are mixed and at this time the team wonders whether Plone’s window of opportunity is closing, at least in terms of market share. There’s no doubt about the Plone project’s vitality, perhaps what is seen is Plone moving away from a mass market offering and to a niche market position(?).

MediaWiki
While MediaWiki came on strong from 2004 through 2006, Google search query volume for MediaWiki has been in a slide since the beginning of 2007. The sustained 18-month decline in query activity causes the team to place MediaWiki in this category. Another reason of concern was the interest level indicators, which showed lower than average performance for MediaWiki. These trends are particularly troubling given that MediaWiki brand indicators show strong recognition; the system receives a lot of exposure courtesy of its association with WikiPedia. It would seem, however, that MediaWiki may be having problems translating brand prominence into market share. A large number of other systems are now offering wiki publishing as part of their offering — is MediaWiki suffering from the increase in competition?

SPIP
SPIP’s search query volume has been in decline since early 2007, with 2006 showing weakness as well. Alexa rankings place SPIP’s project site at the bottom of the survey group.
Another troubling stat is the lack of third party support, with SPIP finishing dead last in both stats measured. Nonetheless, SPIP still shows signs of life with recent activity in the blogosphere, so we cannot count them out of it yet.

New Names Worth Watching
Elgg and MODx arrived on the scene in 2006. Both systems fared relatively well in the survey, showing some surprising strength in several areas.

Elgg
The Elgg project has shown increasing mindshare and brand strength since inception. Recently publishing activity and awards can only boost name recognition. The evidence shows in the social bookmarking metrics, where Elgg finished near the top of the list. Yet despite those positive signs, engagement in the blogosphere is sadly lacking — a troubling statistics given that this system is focused on Web 2.0 social interactivity. Elgg also faces challenges in terms of developer support, though this is perhaps not yet a source of concern given the relative youth
of the project.

MODx
This system showed more mixed metrics than any other in the survey. MODx picked up the “Most Promising CMS” nod at the Packt Awards in 2007; yet oddly, outside MySpace, MODx has been unable to build much show of support. Moreover, while the system has solid search engine rankings, it was the big loser in the Alexa rankings in our survey. Perhaps even more disturbing is that MODx was the only system in survey whose user ratings declined during the test period. It looks like MODx is managing to attract attention but failing to convert the attention into users. Does MODx risk slipping into irreversible decline or will they manage to capitalize on the many advantages they have in placement? If they are to make a go of it, they will need to repair their user ratings and improve their performance in goodwill indicators.

—————————————————————————————————————

I hope you enjoyed this study made by by Ric Sheves and his team at Water & Stone web development company.

I want to thank him for this in depth analysis of the open source content management software (CMS) market.

It surely be useful for many people, especially developers who are choosing these CMS for building websites for their clients.

To download the full survey please follow this link (PDF file, 5.2 MB in size)

Tell us your impressions in the comments!

And if you liked this study tell your friends about it.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Nucleus CMS www.nucleuscms.org is an open source content management blogging platform with many features and plug-ins available to grow your business online.

Nucleus CMS is available for free under the GNU General Public License. NucleusCMS was created by the Nucleus Group in 2002. It was later developed and expanded to be the extensive version that exists today, by the international community called the CMS Team. Nucleus CMS was developed to have multiple weblog content visible on one page. It is designed with the ability to have multiple authors and administrators logging in to post or change configurations as necessary.

You can set up several categories to have a commenting and a voting system provided to enable your readers to share their thoughts and opinions of your posts. All of your urls are optimized for both reader and search engines. You can set the system up to automatically display your posts for future dates. This comes in handy for times when you will be going on vacation or will find yourself unable to post on a regular basis.

There are many changes you can make to create your own unique look through skins, templates, and CSS files.

Many plugins are available to add to the features of your site such as NP_Newsletter, NP_blogstats, calendar, chat, weather forecasts, amazon search, and so many more. Plugins are designed by members of the community and are added daily to the growing database.

This system is simple enough for anyone to learn and expandable enough to allow you to build almost any website you imagine.

Is this software compatible with your server?

NucleusCMS can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. In some hosting packages this software can be automatically installed with a few configuration settings within the Fantastico control panel. Otherwise a manual install will have to be done by uploading the files to your server via FTP.

You will need to know where to access your files, usually under the file manager option in your control panel, to FTP your extracted files into the correct folder. You can use this software as a standalone site, meaning you can choose to install in the root directory of your domain, and have the store as you main index; or you can choose to install in a sub directory as an add on, an example being http://yoursite.com/blog

You will need some HTML and CSS knowledge to edit skins and templates or to do some of the settings.

Getting you blog installed and online

If you are downloading and installing the software manually you can obtain the download at http://nucleuscms.org/download.php You will need to unzip the folder with your favorite zip utility such as WinZip. If you are using Windows XP you can just right click on the zip file and choose the unzip option. Often times if you just double click the folder it will unzip as well.

Once the folder has been unzipped to your desktop you will be needing to upload your folder to your server using an FTP client such as Filezilla, CuteFTP, or SmartFTP. An FTP client enables you to transfer large amounts of files quickly and directly into where you would like it to be on your hosting server without any long time manual hassles of uploading each file alone.

Once you have entered you host address, username, and password (all things that should have been in your welcome email when you signed up with your hosting account), the FTP client connects your computer directly to your server.

Depending on what hosting company you are with, your files might be listed under www. or public-html.

Drag the nucleuscms folder with your mouse to the left hand side and drop it in the folder on your right (whatever folder you created for your blog) or into your root directory if you plan to have it for you main page/site layout.

Make sure to upload .php files in ASC II mode. It may not work otherwise. As long as you are doing a simple extraction and you upload the folder as created you should have the files remain intact as required.

You will need to change the CHMOD settings (permissions) on a few files. The following are the changes needed:
- config.php - change to 666 (allows to update automatically instead of manually)
- /media/directory – change to 777
- all files under /skins/directory - to be able to change and edit SkinFiles plugin change to 666 or to be able to create new files change to 777

Next you will need to create a MySQL database. You can find the icon in your control panel like the following picture below:

In order to create a new database all you need to do is enter the desired name for the database in the New Database field, then click the [Create Database] button. You will also have to create a username; this is so you will have access to the database. You should see the option underneath for name and password.

Then go to the next option and make sure you add the username to your database, and checking to make sure all privileges are given.

Next you are going to need to open a browser and type in http://www.yoursite.com/yourpath/install.php

The install script will prompt you for the following information:

Do not use spaces when you are creating a user name for administrator properties, you will receive an error that it is wrong and cannot be created.

There will be a list of urls for directories that are automatically populated by the system and should not have to be changed.

When you have filled in the proper settings you will be able to click to enter your admin section of the NucleusCMS control panel ( example: url should be http://yoursite.com/weblog)

Before you will be able to login to your NucleusCMS control panel you will need to delete the following files or you will be denied access: install.sql and install.php and you need to change the permissions for the config.php back to 444

The following screenshot is what the inside of the NucleusCMS control panel looks like:

Step 4. Installation troubleshooting

Although the only problems I encountered when installing was the username not being recognized when using a space between words, there are a few security concerns you may want to read.

MySQL passwords: since you must connect to a MySQL database from a PHP script the password for that database must be stored inside a PHP file. On multi-user systems, this might cause an inevitable security risk.

On some systems other users will be able to read your log-in information. Contact your system operator to find out how secure it is to store sensible information inside PHP scripts.

Comparisons with other blogging software

If you are a new user to the blogging world with little programming knowledge, this system may not be the most suitable for you. As it requires some knowledge to configure and create unique looking templates and skins it may cause certain frustrations for a new user.

I found that this system is more suitable for a multi-user setting like in a corporate environment.

If you would like a simple easy to install and use system, I would recommend the WordPress blogging platform.

Alternatively, you can try also Movable Type blogging platform (althought more complicated than Wordpress).

WordPress has many more themes/templates available as well as an extensive list of simple plugins you can just FTP to your server and click to activate from within the Word Press control panel.

Some of the plugins and themes for the NucleusCMs require changes in configurations before they will work properly for your individual needs.

There is a list of plugins you can obtain for NucleusCMS at http://wakka.xiffy.nl/plugin

If you would like to see more options for templates/skins for NucleusCMS you can visit http://skins.nucleuscms.org

There are new skins being added regularly so you may want to bookmark the URL for future visits.

Although the control panel of the NucleusCMS I find to be a little easier to navigate through than Word Press.

If you do come across any questions or concerns with wanting to know how to configure a certain file, the NucleusCMS has a great forum with many members who love to share tips, tricks, and new ideas.

You can join them here http://forum.nucleuscms.org

Conclusion

If you are just getting your feet wet in the blogging world there are many blogging platforms you may come across to decide upon. You need to know what exactly you would like to do with your blogging software. If you would just like a simple means to blog information for your readers with the intent to have your blog as a side page,

Nucleus may be a good platform for you to work from.

If you have more than one employee in your company, the NucleusCMS platform provides the easiest way to accommodate multiple users on the same system, allowing for easier administration and maintenance.

If you would like to create a more detailed site with many extensions and little programming or configuring on your part, then WordPress may be the blogging software for you.

Whatever choice you decide, blogging is a great means to reach many visitors and relay important information they could use.

Blogging is quickly becoming one of the prefered methods of marketing for your business due to the ease and enjoyment one can have with adding plugins, trying out new themes/templates and creating a new unique look that has the ability to have unique content posted right onto the main frame for search engine optimization.
———————————–
Melanie Bremner has been running an online business teaching software programs to new beginners for the last 6 years. She creates lesson plans with easy to follow instructions in which she teaches to her students in an online classroom for which anyone globally can participate. She is presently living in Toronto, Canada.
———————————–

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Mambo is an open source content management system which is currently being managed by an Australian non-profit corporation founded in 2005. Although the Mambo Foundation http://mambo-foundation.org didn’t begin the development of Mambo, it has made the support and development of Mambo its primary objective.

Mambo is free software, using PHP and MySQL to create a dynamic web site which supports the organization and creation of documents and other content interesting to your site visitors. Because of the extensibility of Mambo, it can be used to create portals, as well as complex corporate intranets and applications.

Software and Server Requirements

Mambo is quite easy to install, and has simple server requirements. Like most PHP based GNU/GPL open source programs, you simply need a server running Windows, BSD, or Linux with the following options.

It is recommended that you have the GD, Zlib, FTP, XML, IconV, GetText, and MBString extensions as part of your PHP installation.Mambo has been designed to work with any web browser software on any operating system. You will need to test it thoroughly if you make any changes to the base software, and after you have installed any Mambot extensions.

Installing Mambo

Mambo is available through a variety of control panel applications such as Fantastico’s cPanel and Plesk. If you have a control panel application running on your web host, be sure to check there for the latest version of Mambo. If your server will install it for you, you can be up and running within just a few minutes. A manual install takes a bit longer, but can still easily be completed with access to both your database server and the FTP portal of your web server. If you need to manually install Mambo, you can use the following steps:

1. Download Mambo from www.mambo-foundation.org by clicking the mambo cms download link in the right hand column.

2. Select the Mambo Core Complete package for download for the current version. When asked, click Save on the File Download dialog window.

3. Once the download is complete, extract the files to your hard drive, maintaining the integrity of the directory structure within the ZIP or TAR file.

4. Using FTP software, log into your web server and upload all of the files onto your server, maintaining their original directory structure.

5. Create a database on your server to hold your Mambo installation and information. Write down the information you used when creating this database. This information is required to complete the installation.

6. Open up a Web browser to the installation folder on your server. For example: http://www.mywebserver.com/installation/

7. Read through the Pre-Installation Check. It will give you a list of files and folders that need to have file permissions changed. Use your FTP program to alter these settings using the CHMOD or File Permissions function of that software.

8. Reload the page to ensure that you have properly changed all of the specified File Attributes.

9. Click Next, and agree to the GNU GPL.

10. Click Next, and provide the database login information you specified when you the database was created.

11. Click OK, and verify that you wish to install the sample data.

12. Specify a name for the site.

13. Click Next, and specify the administrator’s email. A password is already provided. You can change it if you wish.

14. Click Next, and copy the information given to you for the configuration.php file. Make a copy of the configuration.php-dist file, and rewrite its contents with this information. Save it with the name configuration.php.

15. Upload your new configuration.php file to your web server using your FTP software.

16. Delete the installation directory on your server.

Mambo Features

Mambo is a feature rich software, with an easy to use interface that may belie its strength and power as a full fledged CMS system with powerful and easy to use tools.

Content Management System:

Mambo uses a WYSIQYG editor to create and edit pages so that the administrator doesn’t need to know code. This allows you to create nested or flat content hierarchies all through your web browser without needing to upload additional content, or manipulate your database through any other interface. You can add images to your content directly through the Administrators interface, or link to images that have already been uploaded to the server through FTP. Mambo allows you to preview your content without making it live on your site, ensuring that you get your content “just right” before anyone else has the opportunity to view it. Once your content is live, it can be incorporated within the site search engine, or included in an RSS feed for dispersal to other sites.

User Management

Mambo supports a variety of classes of users from full members to guests. You can control what information each type of member ahs access to, and even block members that have been problems in the past. If you wish, you can even use the user manager to send out mass mails to users.

Workflow Management

Using Mambo you can control the content that is created by your users, editing preferences, and even set up schedules for authoring and publishing documents. These schedules can even include start and stop dates for article availability.

Create Your Own Templates

There are a variety of Mambo templates that can be downloaded, or you can create your own using the built in template designers. You do not have to be limited to sites that look like every other site on the net. You can easily use the template editor to build a site that uniquely expresses your business or interests. These templates all use CSS to control much of the appearance of the site.

Extensions Abound

The Mambo community has been actively creating extensions for the CMS for over 5 years. While some of these extensions add functionality, others simply increase the features set of an existing function.

Elaborate Help Systems

Mambo doesn’t leave its users in the dark. It has an elaborate help system directly integrated into the administration panel. If you have questions, you can get assistance from the online help, forums, or even commercial publications.

Mambo Support

The Mambo Foundation provides extensive documentation and well populated user forums for those that require assistance in installing or using their Mambo installation. The following sites provide a wide variety of information that should fulfill the needs of all Mambo users. If you can’t find the information you need within the documentation, be sure to ask you questions on the forums. You should have your question answered shortly.

Other Popular CMS Programs

There are many other CMS programs available under the GNU/GPL license. Two of the most popular ones are Joomla and Drupal. The following chart will show you how Mambo compares to these other popular programs.

Check Out Mambo in Action

You can see Mambo in action at a variety of sites located across the globe. These sites can show you just a bit of what can be accomplished using Mambo.

Conclusions

Mambo is a relatively simple content management system (CMS) that can provide many of the functions of more complex systems, while maintaining an ease of use and configuration not found in many of the other available packages. If you are developing a web presence that may require a collection of applications such as forums, photo galleries, news reels, and blogs, you will want to look at a CMS based solution. Mambo is one of the easiest to install and learn to use. Its wide variety of extensions, also called Mambots, can help you add to the functionality without learning a new program.

Your site would be served well by incorporating Mambo into its basic structures.
————————————
Heather Williamson has been a professional writer and author since 1997 when she had her
first IT related book published. Since then she has published 11 more Internet and technology related titles covering the gamut from browser technology, to XML, from Dreamweaver to Linux Applications. She has been involved in Internet related software development for 14 years, and runs her own web development and contract writing firm in East Texas.
————————————

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.