What is a content management system (CMS)?
Using a content management system, you can update your website and database content remotely by logging into your admin area.
A great way to keep your site dynamic and up to date.
There are many content management systems out there. Some are very expensive and some are free (Open source).
For the purpose of this article we'll discuss Mambo and Joomla. Mambo is our favorite CMS and at Corporate Pages we promote, recommend and offer it with all of our hosting plans through “Fantastico”. We offer other CMS but Mambo/Joomla rules.
Mambo is an open source system which is free.
Mambo comes with various templates, none of which are too appealing. We make our own Mambo templates. You can either make your own, buy one or use one of the standard templates. More about that later.
Mambo is PHP driven and runs on an MYSQL database.
Mambo templates rely on a CSS style sheet for formatting. More about CSS in a future blog.
In the Mambo system there is a directory called templates. After mambo is installed you can see the templates that come with it by looking inside the directory "templates" on your server.
To modify a template you must modify the index.php, CSS files as well as upload relative images into the images directory. All this can be done in Macromedia Dreamweaver or similar.
Templates can be purchased for instant use also. See the links below.
Mambo is “module” driven. This is what makes it so powerful. Many modules and components are available and can be quickly deployed. Modules and components are free add-ons developed by open source guru's.
Mambo pages can be edited online using one of the generic editors that it comes with. We prefer to use WYSIWYGPRO that is much more powerful.
Certain server requirements are needed to run mambo and our servers fully support Mambo and other content management systems.
At corporate pages if you have an account with us Mambo or one of the other popular open source (free) CMS systems can be downloaded and installed using “Fantastico” with only a few mouse clicks. The CMS can be uninstalled or upgraded just as easily.
Here are some of mambo's capabilities:
Shopping cart
Real estate sales
Bible study
Support system
Online photo album
Link exchange
Document management
User management
Software repository
Forums
Much more
To read more about mambo check out these links below:
http://www.mambo.com.au/ (Official Australian Mambo website)
Here are a few Mambo sites we have developed for customers:
http://www.projectbuild.com
http://www.eyeballinspections.biz/
http://www.euromidpac.com/trading/
http://eppers-electric.com/
Check out this site to compare other Content Management Systems:
http://www.cmsmatrix.org/
Please remember the information we have provided here is from our perspective.
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