Customer Reviews

Building Websites With Mambo : A fast paced introductory tutorial

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Notes from a total newbie to Mambo: Maybe this is the best Mambo book available. I don't know as I haven't seen the others. However I was pretty disappointed with it. For starters, it's only 231 pages long, which isn't much for $40, but maybe that's inevitable for a book with a smaller audience. I was expecting a book with lots of detailed information but most of the book is either a rehash of the manual or a restatement of what is obvious from the menus themselves:

"Banner Name: Name of the banner

Published: Whether the banner is published or not

Impressions Made: Number of impressions to date

Impressions Left: Number of remaining impressions

Clicks: Clicks on the banner

% Clicks: Proportion of impressions to clicks."

Compare this with the (free) manual's description of the same:

"Impressions Made - This displays the number of times the banner has been shown on your site.

Impressions Left - This displays the number of impressions left to display if a limit has been set while creating or editing a banner.

Clicks - This displays the number of times that particular banner has been clicked on by a user of the site.

% Clicks - This displays the number of clicks as a percentage ratio to the number of impressions that have been made. 1% would mean for example, that 1 in every 100 people had clicked on the banner.

Published - This displays whether the banner is currently Published for display or not."

Want to know what the "Module Positions" menu does? I wanted to know and couldn't figure it out from the help box at first. Well, "module position" is not in the index. In fact, the only index entries for "module" are "module" and "module copying." The scrawny index has no entry for "menu" or "help", either. So it gets hard to find things. If there is a good explanation of the "Module Positions," I'm yet to find it.(BTW, I finally figured it out ... it's nothing but a table of position names and has nothing to do with the actual positioning. I think!)

The last three chapters of the book do go beyond the basics, though still with the unevenness and lack of detail. You can learn how to install a component, design a template, and write your own program extensions. The last is only 20 pages long, though.

Summary: The obscure remains obscure and the obvious is made doubly so. If, like me, you like to have a hard copy manual on hand, and you don't mind the price, you may be happy (after all, the previous 4 reviewers were very happy). If you're looking for something more, keep looking or at least browse the inside of the book before buying.

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.

I bought this book to research how to implement a new site on Mambo CMS. It basically was a copy of basic explanations that are on the mambo site, and only addressed the structure that is in place with default values on the test page. Why bother spending the money when all of the info is online? And why call it a tutorial, when it doesn't show you how to do anything, but rather just explains what each thing is supposed to do?

Also, and this is my fault for not thinking about it when I was buying, but 227 pages of computer book is not worth $40. Even if it were really good, which it's not.

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

(...)

Bad points :

------------

- No real structure

- Hardly any advice on why to use this or that function

- Most options not even explored (has the author ??)

- What is the use of including code with no explanation on how to use it and/or what it is for ?

- Expensive

Good points

-----------

- Gives some kind of an overview, but the time reading the book, one could have figgered that out by himself

- Explains some of the shortcomings of Mambo/Joomla

Conclusion :

------------

This has been the worst book I have ever read, and I do not understand anyone that gives it a score higher than 3 stars.. Expect the 'great' reviews to be written by the author or friends of the author, I serious disagree with their view !

A book should encourage the reader not demotivate..

Next time the author writes the book, he better stays at one place and get focussed (and not travelling from place to place and connect to free wireless lans... as he introduces the book)

Spent your money on books that are worth it, definitely not this one !!!

A friend bought this and he raved about how it was the end all to Mambo knowledge. Of course I had to get...his copy and see for myself. I handed it back after 5 minutes never to want to hold it again. Like the guy below, if you need something to read while on the squatter, get it. Otherwise, download the mans into your PDA and read away.

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 Websites with Mambo" bills itself as "a fast paced tutorial" for developing a Mambo-equipped website, and it certainly is that. Written for "web developers, designers, webmasters, content editors and marketing professionals," "Building Websites with Mambo" covers a lot of turf with an easy-to-read, useful and pragmatic narrative. At times I wished for more detailed help with some of the administration functions. (I found Netshine Software's "Mambo Tutorial - Quick Start Guide," available as a downloadable PDF, a more useful guide for managing sections, categories and content items, for instance.) Overall, Graf's tutorial helped me with much I previously had only hazy familiarity with. For instance I found the segments covering mass mail, news feeds, polls and contact categories alone worth the book's asking price.

Overall I highly recommend "Building Websites with Mambo: A step by step tutorial." Particularly if you're a web designer/developer who has yet to experience the joy of equipping a website with a full-featured content management system, and turning static "brochureware" into a dynamic infohub. These days no business or organization has any excuse for failing to deploy a dynamic, content-rich website. Especially with such a powerful CMS like Mambo/Joomla freely available to all. And now folks who read in English have "Building Websites with Mambo" available as an excellent resource to help us get the most from Mambo Open Source.

David J. Myers directs Open Media Center, a grassroots media activist organization in Portland, Oregon. Dave earns a living running EvolvNet Consulting, an open source software consultancy also located in Portland.

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.

If you have ever tried to build a web page for your own use or for a company, you know first hand that although it seems easy at first, it really isn't. A large number of technologies are involved, together with other extra-technological parameters like psychology, marketing, color theory, etc. The situation becomes a real nightmare when you have to build a website, an organized set of web pages, that interact between them and with the visitor. And what if you want to add extra features like document management, contact forms, sophisticated menu systems, to name a few? What if you want to make it have an elegant appearance that at the same time, must be easy to draw? What if you want to implement a mechanism that gives you the strength to modify content in an easy way? What if you want the changes to your navigation structure be reflected immediately on your menus?

You are asking too much! Or maybe not, since Mambo is here!

Mambo is one of the most sophisticated CMS in the market today. The good news is that is also free to use, because it is released under the GNU/GPL license.

"Building websites with Mambo" is a book by Hagen Graf and Packt Publishing that will guide you and introduce you to this magnificent CMS system.

The author is an experienced Mambo user and the book is based on his experience. It is aimed to someone who wants to go down and dirty right away with Mambo.

In chapter 2 you will be guided to install Mambo. Mambo can be installed on several environments, from Windows, to a dedicated Linux server. For sure, you will find instructions for your environment here.

In chapter 3, you will take a quick tour on the default view of Mambo: what you will see as a first time user. You will be introduced to terms that you will use every day. The illustrations help the reader understand the environment quickly.

Every CMS, and Mambo is no exception, has two views. The front end is what visitors see, and the back end from where you build and administer your website. Chapter 4 serves as an introduction to the back end environment. You are going to spend a lot of time here, so read carefully, and experiment with your Mambo. The author uses plain language to explain the new features. A large number of figures make the life of the reader easier. Chapter 4 is one of the largest in this book. After all back end is Mambo!

Mambo wouldn't be what it is today, if it hadn't a large number of 3Party extensions that expand its functionality. In this case Mambo serves as a framework for them. But this is technical jargon and probably you are not interested for it right now. Hagen Graf knows that, so in chapter 5 goes right into the point and introduces a number of the most popular plugins you will ever use with Mambo. Namely a forum, a calendar, a picture gallery, adding comments, creating multilingual pages and an online shop. You read well! You don't need a number of different applications to accomplish all that. You can do it all from Mambo!

Chapter 6 introduces one of the things that gives extremely power to Mambo, the templates. With templates you can alter the appearance of your site and you can do it in no time... Just select another template and your site has a new face. Simple as that! There is a huge number of free templates waiting for you to download and use. But if you want to build your own, then this chapter is written for you. Unfortunately you will learn only the basics. This is not a surprise, as the whole book, serves as an introduction.

In chapter 5 you used a number of extensions to add extra functionality to your site. In chapter 7 you will learn how to make your own extensions. The existence of this chapter is a pleasant surprise. You don't expect to find information for such a special subject in an introductory book. The info provided serves as a simple introduction to this huge area. I wonder if it could be otherwise. Building extensions for Mambo requires good knowledge of PHP and MySQL programming. It is not a subject that will ever bother the everyday user of Mambo. But if you really want to know how to do it, then be advised that the info is just introductory. Maybe a new title will be released, specializing into this area.

The overall impression from the book was good. The figures were a lot and explanatory, the language was simple, the info provided was targeting the new comers. I missed a couple of things. A step by step guide on how to build my first Mambo site and an in depth analysis of how to build extensions.

Despite that, I recommend this book to someone that wants to know Mambo and doesn't have the time to surf around trying to collect all this info.

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.