My first CMS

[Jim Royal]

Sorry for the slightly off-topic post.

I'm likely going to be building a web site that includes a CMS. This
will be a first for me. I have tentitively selected Mambo as the
publishing engine.

My question in a nutshell... What's the most common mistake that
someone in my position is likely to make?

The question is directed at those who wish that they knew then what
they know now. I seek the benefit of your hindsight.

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

Sorry for the slightly off-topic post.

I'm likely going to be building a web site that includes a CMS. This
will be a first for me. I have tentitively selected Mambo as the
publishing engine.

good choice.

My question in a nutshell... What's the most common mistake that
someone in my position is likely to make?

don't overload your site with all the gadgets mambo offers. just try to
install mambo once, and play around. don't get excited by all the
additional modules and components you can add. just install mambo as it
is, and try to experiment until you have fully understand how content is
being handled, and how the basic components work together.
reduce to the max.

cheers
bernhard

 

[Karl Core]

Sorry for the slightly off-topic post.

I'm likely going to be building a web site that includes a CMS. This
will be a first for me. I have tentitively selected Mambo as the
publishing engine.

My question in a nutshell... What's the most common mistake that
someone in my position is likely to make?

The question is directed at those who wish that they knew then what
they know now. I seek the benefit of your hindsight.

Content Management Systems, when used by someone with no clear vision of
what the site will contain, always lead to chaotic information architecture.
I have seen this happen so many times. Someone in the organization (who
knows jack shit about the Web and Information Architecture) is often given
free reign to dump whatever garbage into the CMS that they see fit - usually
at the behest of some equally clueless moron in upper management.

Like any website, tt is important that you (and all involved) come to a
solid, easy-to-use and understand information architecture before any work
begins on the site itself. Ferret out all possible topics and sections to
iron out the content of the site and the structure of that content.

Mambo is an excellent CMS, from what I've seen and will make your job
easier, so I say go for it. Just recognize that it is only a tool, not a
solution.

 

[Tom]

Sorry for the slightly off-topic post.

I'm likely going to be building a web site that includes a CMS. This
will be a first for me. I have tentitively selected Mambo as the
publishing engine.

My question in a nutshell... What's the most common mistake that
someone in my position is likely to make?

The question is directed at those who wish that they knew then what
they know now. I seek the benefit of your hindsight.

I have just used mambo for the first time and found it to be excellent. We
have resisted the temptation to change the look and feel too much, until the
multiple users get used to it.

If anything we have not 'published' all the features to keep it simple.

I found it easy to install/configure and easy to use.

I would say that the biggest mistake would be to change too much too soon.
At the start - less is more.

 

[Jeffrey Silverman]

Like any website, tt is important that you (and all involved) come to a
solid, easy-to-use and understand information architecture before any work
begins on the site itself. Ferret out all possible topics and sections to
iron out the content of the site and the structure of that content.

Mambo is an excellent CMS, from what I've seen and will make your job
easier, so I say go for it. Just recognize that it is only a tool, not a
solution.

Great answer!

 

[Toby Inkster]

http://www.newtnotes.com

Hardly a great advertisement for the CMS -- check your meta tags.

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 12:52:56 -0500, Jim Royal wrote:
Using Mambo.

I had a *very* hard time figuring out how to configure Mambo to my liking
and eventually gave up and went to Nucleus. My site is run on Nucleus.

http://www.newtnotes.com

how can this be XHTML strict?
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

when you have such links:
href="index.php?catid=3&amp;blogid=1"

and tags:
<img border="0" src="/images/upper_left_nn_logo.png" alt="nn logo">

this would not even be valid XHTML transitional


bernhard

p.s. in this case mambo isn't any better (maybe the upcoming v5.0, but
there is no real XHTML implementation of mambo available)

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

Bernhard Sturm wrote (wrongly):

how can this be XHTML strict?
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

ooopss.. sorry.. for that.. must be too early in the morning... outch.
you ARE right and I read it wrong.
so ignore my above post...
shee.. have to WORK now

bernhard (completely blind for any HTML doctype

 

[JDS]

p.s. in this case mambo isn't any better (maybe the upcoming v5.0, but
there is no real XHTML implementation of mambo available)

Well, whether or not the page validates has nothing to do with the
underlying CMS.

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

Well, whether or not the page validates has nothing to do with the
underlying CMS.

unfortunately it has.. mambo has an engine which handles content items
and other content related stuff (as all other CMS do). If your CMS is
producing links such as:

<a href='index.php?content=15&item=5&lang=de' title='xx'>

then this would not validate as XHTML because the entity & has to be
composed as &amp; by the CMS... (and the link is not SEF as well, but
this would be another issue, which mambo can handle perfectly

the same goes for all the other handling of tags and properties. an
image tag produced by your CMS like:

<img src='foo.gif' ALT='foo'>

would not validate (as the tag has to be closed and uppercase properties
are not allowed)

and so on... a CMS is not only a database but it's an entire system
which produces HTML/XHTML output based on a template and internal CMS
HTML output rules, and this can be validated.

cheers
bernhard

 

[Jim Royal]

don't overload your site with all the gadgets mambo offers. just try to
install mambo once, and play around. don't get excited by all the
additional modules and components you can add. just install mambo as it
is, and try to experiment until you have fully understand how content is
being handled, and how the basic components work together.
reduce to the max.

Excellent advice. Many thanks.

 

[Jim Royal]

Like any website, tt is important that you (and all involved) come to a
solid, easy-to-use and understand information architecture before any work
begins on the site itself. Ferret out all possible topics and sections to
iron out the content of the site and the structure of that content.

I always start from a detailed sitemap, and have draft content produced
before designing. But it is good to be reminded. It is also important
to remember that a too narrowly-defined IA can be a straightjacket for
the people creating new content using the CMS.

 

[Jim Royal]

I would say that the biggest mistake would be to change too much too soon.
At the start - less is more.

Thanks!

 

[Jim Royal]

I have several CMSes at this point and the one I've liked the best so far
has been Nucleus. I think you can find that at nucleuscms.org. Nucleus
is easy (as compared to Mambo) to customize, has plenty of documentation
(but admittedly could use more) and is easy to install.

I will check out Nucleus. Thanks.

 

[JDS]

If your CMS is
producing links such as:

<a href='index.php?content=15&item=5&lang=de' title='xx'>

then this would not validate as XHTML because the entity & has to be
composed as &amp; by the CMS...

Oh, right, gotcha. You are correct.

 

[JDS]

I will check out Nucleus. Thanks.

Hey, also consider checking out this site:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

It is a very good starting point for getting probably too much information
on CMSes available to you.

 

[Karl Core]

I always start from a detailed sitemap, and have draft content produced
before designing. But it is good to be reminded. It is also important
to remember that a too narrowly-defined IA can be a straightjacket for
the people creating new content using the CMS.

Make sure the site's structure is reflective of your user's concept of how
the site should be structured, not your concept, because they won't
necessarily agree.

 

[JDS]

Hardly a great advertisement for the CMS -- check your meta tags.

Right. Well, my point is merely that I was able to configure my site
using Nucleus how I wanted it to look.

I was *never* able to get Mambo to do what I wanted! Mambo's concepts
just did not work within the scope of the way I conceive a website.
Nucleus, though, was much much much easier to maxi-configure. For me,
that is. With Mambo I was forced into using one of their "templates" and
that just wasn't what I wanted to do.

My META tags could be fixed relatively easily. I just don't give a shit
enough right now to fix 'em. It is not a for-profit site, after all --
nothing riding on it.