Customer Reviews

Mastering Mambo: E-Commerce, Templates, Module Development, SEO, Security, and Performance

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

 

 

I am not really a Mambo newbie, I've been toying with it on a casual basis for about a little over a year. So working around in the admin section, adding content through the front end, and any other mundane routines I am very comfortable with. Thankfully, that kind of information isn't what Mastering Mambo offers.

What Tobias Hauser and Christian Wenz do offer in their book is a very comprehensive guide to using Mambo for your development needs. There are many different aspects involved in any web project. What I really enjoyed about this book is that as a beginner programmer, I was able to pick this book up and understand it really well.

Tips are offered throughout the book so as to make the most efficient use of Mambo. Some tips offered include how to preview sites using mambo templates. Another tip involves using an XML validator to prevent error messages when installing templates, modules, or components.

I would venture to say this book is probably good for both the beginning programmer as well as the advanced programmer. The beginner will benefit by being exposed to programming concepts and how to develop business logic. The advanced programmer will be able to use this to pick up on the specifics of Mambo.

While my particular interest in this book was to learn more about developing modules and components, that certainly isn't the only thing addressed in this book. This book is a very good survey of how flexible Mambo is and provides information on how to customize the design, increase functionality, marketing with SEO, and security issues.

"Mastering Mambo" is a new book for people running and building websites with the Mambo Content Management System., It was written in an awkward time, when the Mambo CMS was in the process of splitting from Joomla, but because the codebases of both projects is still so similar, "Mastering Mambo" is a relevant book for both Mambo and Joomla users.

Initially, I was a little confused about the target audience for this volume. The same publisher (Packt) also has a book called "Building Websites with Mambo" that would be more appropriate than for Mambo beginners. The authors, Tobias Hauser and Christian Wenz, describe this book as being for "administrators, designers and developers" which encompasses a pretty wide group of people with diverse skill-levels.

The first part of the book begins by covering the most basic features such as how to logon, install components, change templates and so on. It would suit someone building a site for the first time with Mambo.

As it progresses, the book becomes more complex. There are chapters on Mambelfish, VirtueMart (called PHP-Shop here) and DocMan as well as chapters that summarise options for people wanting forums and galleries. By the time it gets to page 180 out of 250, the authors are describing how to develop your own modules and mambots. This is done in a clear way, with Mambo's functions and variables explained quickly and concisely.

That completed, the third part of the book describes ways to complete a successful Mambo deployment. The Search Engine Optimisation chapter is OK, but could do with more information on producing a Google-friendly template rather than just human-readable URLs. The Accessibility chapter could also do with more Mambo-specific advice.

However, there are two excellent chapters in this final section. The chapter on security is very useful. It covers cross site scripting, SQL injection, unexpected user data and more. It offers smart advice and is reasonably detailed. Finally, the performance and caching chapter is short and sweet, particularly in its coverage of the uses that Zend software.

Overall, the book is well-written and has a lot of useful illustrations. Nonetheless, it suffers from two weaknesses. One is the unavoidable problem that software development moves more quickly than publishing process and some of the information here is inevitably out-of-date. The second is that although I liked "Mastering Mambo", I'm unsure who to recommend it for. Rather it is an all-round effort. Administrators can use the first part of the book. Developers new to Mambo will benefit from the second half.

I bought Mastering Mamo because I believed it would be for an advanced or more seasoned user seeing that there was already a "Building Websites With Mambo : A fast paced introductory tutorial Building Websites With Mambo" by the same publisher. The book is geared more towards work (document management, e-commerce) based as opposed to personal sites.

For a book published Dec 2005, I found it to be a little dated although not enough to be an issue. I also found several typos.

In my opinion, this book is very good for a person who has installed mambo/joomla, and is trying to understand how the ideas behind how the CMS works. This book is great for accellerating the learning curve of how Components, Modules, and Bots interplay... What positions are and how they work... And overall how to start extending the default install.

About half the book is nice overviews of 3rd party extensions. I think that is the best part of the book. It's nice to have them but I wouldn't buy the book for it.

The sections on security and Search Engine Optimization, and performance tuning are good for begining web/cms developers, but readers already familiar with the basics (applicable to all web apps) are not going to get a whole lot. There isn't much that is "Mambo/Joomla" specific.

Overall I'd say that it's a good book that I would recommend to a mambo/joomla beginner intent on building service style sites.

I give this book 3 stars because it is a good book, but despite what it says, that it is for "anyone who has developed a mambo site"... anyone who HAS developed already knows how the core components works, already knows how to search for, find, and install Comp, Mods, Bots... at least. So half the book is useless, the other half is 3PD extensions which can be found and on the web.

Again, good for noobs who are trying to figure out what all the admin pages, fields and parameters are for but if you're already comfortable in the backend... move on.

This book is a very good and complete tutorial on advanced uses of the Mambo CMS and associated components.

Alas, like any paper book about an open source product, it has a hard time keeping up with current developments. Still work the price of admission.

Particularly useful topics include eCommerce (This add-in is now called "VirtueMart"), and Search Engine Optimization.

I ordered this item and it was returned as undeliverable - at least twice.

So I really can't comment other than that - the delivery system is not very good.

This book does not offer you the info to start with Mambo/Joomla without help. It simply lacks the depth for it. I bought the book, and followed the examples, that's all i can do now. The examples are simple, but for a joomla starter hardley explained. Wat cracks me is that there's not any explanatio about the structure of Joomla, the relations between objects and their calls.