Customer Reviews

Mambo: Your visual blueprint for building and maintaining Web sites with the Mambo Open Source CMS

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is not for programmers but is for administrators and Mambo users. Very complete. Covers a lot of things I did not know (and I have used the system for quite a while). By far the most complete work on the subject. Covers the newest version as well, including the new editor. Well worth it -- and long overdue! Thanks!

If you're moderately comfortable with new software, ie., you can read the screen and explore the options given, then this book is not for you. I was looking for more in depth info than can be had in the online tutorials, but didn't find anything new.

This book is lacking vital information if you want anything other than a bog standard install. For instance, it walks you through the graphical steps to install a new component. This is fine, but I'd figured out that on my own. Component didn't work, even though the install was correct. The absolutely VITAL step of creating a menu link to the new component so that it will function is no where to be found in this book. If this were the only vital thing missing, it could be forgiven. But the problem is endemic throughout.

If you intend to do ANY customizing of your site, don't bother wasting your money. Play around on your own, hit the forums and ask questions. If you consider yourself a poweruser of any software, again, don't waste your money.

If someone has turned over a functional Mambo or Joomla site for you to administer, and you have done no computer administration ever, and find the whole thing intimidating, then this book is for you.

This book is focused on how to accomplish tasks -- how to create a new page, how to edit a page, how to manage menus, etc., etc. It provides a lot of other information in the process with tips on how to best use the system. I don't normally care all that much for "visual" style books, but with a system as complex as Mambo this is actually very effective. You can either follow their steps or use it as the basis for doing your own thing. Recommended!

I bought this book because I really wanted to learn Mambo. I achieved that goal, somewhat, with the help of this book.

Let's concentrate on the good stuff first. I love the illustrations in this book. They help me a lot because I'm a visual learner.

The book fails on one fundamental point. How to really get started.

When you install Mambo, the Mambo manual is the Mambo site. You need to get rid of the manual and create your own Mambo site.

But how do you do it?! The book doesn't tell you how.

The book is a bit outdated I think. There was info on installing Pony Gallery... Unfortunately Pony Gallery seems to no longer be available.

That is likely due to some sort of split in the Mambo community. It appears Joomla is the result of that split, and it appears Joomla is overshadowing Mambo.

So now it appears I need to forget about Mambo and learn Joomla. I can't afford to keep buying new books.

Unfortunately I'm not able to learn from online forums, or most of the documentation included with these resources.

Most of the people in the community say this stuff is so intuitive that a real manual isn't needed.

I don't find this stuff intuitive at all.

I have bought several Mambo and Joomla books. This is by far the best for anyone who needs to do day-to-day administration of a Mambo or Joomla site and does not want to make a career out of it.

Using "Search inside this book" helped me decide for myself to purchase in what appeared to be conflicting love/hate reviews.

The screens of the actual product do walk an administrator thru the steps, so that may seem repetitive or a "waste" to some, but the extra tips and explanations about why you'd do something and the alternatives offered make this a worthwhile purchase for me.

Perhaps I could find a lot of the same info on the forums, but I wanted something cohesively packaged that I can follow along with - rather than the hunting expedition style of a forum.

This book easily translates to Joomla! It is very useful if you are just getting started and need help with design.

Brett says, "eg section and category are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized." While those two words aren't ordinarily proper nouns, they certainly are in Mambo and are properly used as such in this excellent book.

My only issue is that it gives no help with installing Mambo under Windows, which is unfortunately the environment I'm forced to use at work.

The authors of this book need to seriously study English before they write anything more. While it's easy to say that you should over look poor or unusual grammar and concentrate on the content this is so bad it makes it hard to read. They also need to learn the difference between a proper noun and common noun, this leads to a weird outbreak of capital letters throughout the book making sentences even harder to read; eg section and category are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized.