Book Image

Learning Mambo: A Step-by-Step Tutorial to Building Your Website

Book Image

Learning Mambo: A Step-by-Step Tutorial to Building Your Website

Overview of this book

Mambo is a mature and fully featured open-source Content Management System (CMS). Mambo is easy to use at the entry level for creating basic websites, while having the power and flexibility to support complex web applications. Mambo implements the core requirements of a full-featured CMS. It has a powerful and extensible templating system, user access control, content approval, rich administrative control, and content display scheduling. New features and extensions are added to the core system, with many more being available and supported by the community. This book targets the 4.6 release of Mambo, and takes you through creating an example website. Beginning with a discussion of the requirements for the example site, the site unfolds as you progress through the chapters, learning more about Mambo, and how to complete the tasks needed to build the site. You'll see the basic configuration options for setting up your site, and learn about Mambo's main elements as you work your way around its web-based administration area. As soon as you're familiar with the general principles and behavior of Mambo, it's time to pile on the features for your site; adding modules and components, uploading images and other resources, and managing templates. You will learn to use Mambo's powerful Universal Installer to effortlessly install add-ons that are not part of the standard distribution. The pages on your site, how they are displayed, and who can see them, are determined by Mambo's menu system. With many examples of the different types of menu items, the book will lead you through the important tasks of creating menu items, and help you understand how these choices structure the pages on your site and ease your visitors' navigation. You will see how to organize and enter your content into Mambo, and how to manage and edit this organization and your pieces of content. As we tackle user management, you will see how Mambo allows you to set up user accounts with different permissions, including a set of special users who can author or edit content. We also take a detailed look at the notifications that occur when content is submitted by these users. This analysis reveals how the Mambo publishing workflow process works, and how you can exploit it effectively. Moving on from the standard Mambo features, we look at some third-party extensions that add powerful discussion forum, event scheduling, and image gallery features to your site. To create a new look for your site, you create a new template. We cover this, and even if you're no expert in web design, you will be taken through a number of basic tasks to create an impressive new design for your site.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Learning Mambo : A Step-by-Step Tutorial to Building Your Website
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Installing XAMPP

Zak Springs Golf Club Website


We're going to create an example site, "Zak Springs Golf Club", as we move through the book. Rather than just arbitrarily adding features to an empty Mambo installation, we will see how the list of requirements described below translate into actual actions for configuring Mambo, and the kind of decisions that need to be made to complete the site.

Zak Springs Golf Club is a rather colorful client. Before we get started with Mambo itself, let's take a moment to understand the site we're going to build.

The Client

Zak Springs Golf Club is located near the Skull Mountains, and boasts two 18-hole golf courses, practice facilities, and extensive hospitality facilities. The Golf Club was recently bought by a mysterious businessman, Otto Simplex, who now runs the club as General Manager. The club had fallen into disrepair over the last 10 years, beset by a number of mysterious incidents and unfortunate accidents. The club was founded 12 years ago, built on land cheaply bought from the military, following the immediate and uncommented closure of the top-secret Nemesis Project. The history of the club is still evident today, since the tougher of the two courses is in fact called Nemesis. The other course is the Sinistra course. Both are now in excellent condition, and present a formidable challenge for even the lowest-handicap golfer.

The Club is looking to expand its membership, and welcome new members from a number of the large metropolises that skirt the Skull mountains.

The Club currently has no website, but Mr. Simplex views the site as key to recruiting new members to the club, and also providing a community for the members of the Club, many of whom live far from the club. In addition to securing new members, retaining the existing members is key to the growth of the Club, and Mr. Simplex feels that keeping the members remotely involved in the club, in addition to providing excellent service and facilities at the Club itself, will go some way to ensuring this.

The Club also has no dedicated IT support person, but the Assistant to the Club Secretary is regarded as the "go-to" person when there is a technical problem.

Staff

The senior staff of the Club are:

President

Otto Simplex

Administrative Staff
  • General Manager: Marie Flame

  • Club Secretary: Audrey Pores

  • Assistant to the Club Secretary: Edgar Hooch

  • Marketing Manager: Brad Visionary

Golf Staff
  • Director of Golf and Club Professional: Neil Vortex

  • Assistant Golf Professional: Dax Carew

  • Head Green Keeper: Cuthbert Cutty Cuthbertson

Hospitality
  • Executive Chef: Bunsen Honeydew

  • Assistant Food and Beverage Manager: Betty Book

  • Assistant Food and Beverage Manager: Chuck Spung

  • Receptionist and Guest Relations: Mya Lop

Requirements

From detailed meetings with the clients, the following list of objectives and functionality of the site was arrived at. Note that none of these relate specifically to Mambo. Fitting these requirements into Mambo will be the challenge of the later chapters. It is entirely possible that not all of the requirements will be achievable within our first attempt at putting the site together.

Key Objectives of the Site

  • Promote the club and its objectives

  • Publish information to attract new players and members

  • Provide online services to build community and retain members

General Functionality of the Site

  • All content to be managed in-house without technical skills

  • Intuitive and easy-to-use browser-based administration interface

  • Multiple users with different permission levels and publication rights

  • Consistent presentation for all content

  • Site search facility

  • Optimized for search-engine finding

Specific Functionality of the Site

  • Categorized news publishing; course news, membership information, competition results

  • Image gallery for showcasing holes on the courses

  • Calendar for forthcoming competitions and other course events

  • Discussion forum for members to interact

  • Members-only areas

  • Staff contacts

  • Information on local accommodation and leisure partners

  • Course scorecards

  • Weblog for Club Professionals, offering equipment and game tips

  • Weblog for Club President

  • Newsletter

  • Content for hospitality facilities

  • Course rates

  • Membership application forms, membership conditions, club rules

  • Contact Details

Permissions and Privileges Required

  • Administrative Staff to be able to publish and amend news items

  • Hospitality staff to be able to publish and amend content for hospitality facilities

  • Marketing Manager to be able to amend any content on the site

  • Nominated member of Administrative Staff to have full control over site

  • Ability to amend these permissions in future

  • Club President to have full control over site

Curiously, that last requirement was added in handwriting by the president himself, and did not appear in any earlier document.

Might Have... One day

The Club President has an ambitious vision for the site. However, in the first version of the site, there are some things that we have postponed. Some of these include:

  • E-commerce Features for the Professional's shop

  • Online Handicap register

  • Competition charts

This is a pretty extensive list of requirements to be going on with, so let's not hang around, since rumor has it that Otto Simplex is not a patient man.