Which is better: Mambo, Typo3 or Ezpublish?

[Deryck]

OK, thats an unfair question but does anyone know of any good resources
for comparisons between these 3 CMS's? Alternatively, any personal
recommendations would be appreciated.

I am involved in a project to 'make over' a medium sized site that is
already using Mambo. My gut preference is to stick with Mambo although I
have never used it. I have experimented with Typo3. I am about to take a
few days to explore all 3 of them a little bit more and any advice would
be welecomed.

Cheers

Deryck

 

[Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc.]

OK, thats an unfair question but does anyone know of any good resources
for comparisons between these 3 CMS's? Alternatively, any personal
recommendations would be appreciated.

I am involved in a project to 'make over' a medium sized site that is
already using Mambo. My gut preference is to stick with Mambo although I
have never used it. I have experimented with Typo3. I am about to take a
few days to explore all 3 of them a little bit more and any advice would
be welecomed.

We offer a few different CMSs, with our hosting packages. By far, the most
used is Mambo. Not sure why its the most used, I've never used it
personally. The fact that more people choose it over the others must mean
something.

--Tina

 

[Deryck]

We offer a few different CMSs, with our hosting packages. By far, the most
used is Mambo. Not sure why its the most used, I've never used it
personally. The fact that more people choose it over the others must mean
something.

--Tina

Thanks Tina. I was coming to the same conclusion, Mambo is very popular
and must count for something in any evaluation process. If I find out
why it's so popluar I will let you know.

Cheers

Deryck

 

[Luigi Donatello Asero]

May I ask you whether you have many customers from Europe?

 

[Tina - AffordableHOST, Inc.]

May I ask you whether you have many customers from Europe?

We have about 65% US customers and the rest are non-US.

--Tina

 

[JDS]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 11:37:59 +0000, Deryck wrote:

Thanks Tina. I was coming to the same conclusion, Mambo is very popular
and must count for something in any evaluation process. If I find out
why it's so popluar I will let you know.

Cheers

Deryck

Popular or not, I strongly disliked Mambo. Sure it was powerful,
featureful, and flexible, but it was also really really hard to
configure/customize (beyond using available skins/templates) and the
documentation was incomplete.

I tried Nucleus which I like a lot better, but it is missing some workflow
and multiple-user features that Mambo has.

http://nucleuscms.org

 

[Deryck]

Popular or not, I strongly disliked Mambo. Sure it was powerful,
featureful, and flexible, but it was also really really hard to
configure/customize (beyond using available skins/templates) and the
documentation was incomplete.

Thanks JDS, I appreciate your comments. May I ask how much of a techie
you consider yourself to be? Just so I can quantify how hard it is to
customize.

I'll look at nucleus although I'm being pushed to choose between Mambo,
Typo3 and Ezpublish and Mambo is looking the lesser of the 3 evils.

Cheers



Deryck

 

[Phil Thompson]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 11:37:59 +0000, Deryck wrote:


Popular or not, I strongly disliked Mambo. Sure it was powerful,
featureful, and flexible, but it was also really really hard to
configure/customize (beyond using available skins/templates) and the
documentation was incomplete.

I agree with you, as I too found mambo very tough to customise. Mambo also
failed quite miserably when I ran some usability tests on it with non-techie
people, when it turned out to not be a very intuitive piece of software to
use, in my experiments.

Phil Thompson
http://www.doubleonegative.com/

<snip />

 

[JDS]

Thanks JDS, I appreciate your comments. May I ask how much of a techie
you consider yourself to be? Just so I can quantify how hard it is to
customize.

I consider myself an expert PHP coder and experienced, certified Linux
system administrator. A generally high-level computer user.

 

[Kor]

I started with Typo3 and thought that was the solution. But it was
over 20MB and has a steep learning curve, and a special language you
have to learn when customizing.

Then I thought EZ Publishing was THE answer, standards compliant etc.
But using it in a shared host environment can be a problem, the
php.ini needs to be changed, I remember there is a parameter something
like "memory_limit" that needs at least 16MB. Also we had to hire a
PHP specialist who spent hours getting it to work.

Now I found Mambo, and I cannot find the right documentation. Also, I
can't find how to add the wysiwyg editor, and which one. And in the
text only text box you (or worse, my customer) needs to add "<br />"
manually to create a new line.

This is my personal experience and I am a bit desperate now...

-Kor

 

[Pete Gray]

I started with Typo3 and thought that was the solution. But it was
over 20MB and has a steep learning curve, and a special language you
have to learn when customizing.

Then I thought EZ Publishing was THE answer, standards compliant etc.
But using it in a shared host environment can be a problem, the
php.ini needs to be changed, I remember there is a parameter something
like "memory_limit" that needs at least 16MB. Also we had to hire a
PHP specialist who spent hours getting it to work.

Now I found Mambo, and I cannot find the right documentation. Also, I
can't find how to add the wysiwyg editor, and which one. And in the
text only text box you (or worse, my customer) needs to add "<br />"
manually to create a new line.

This is my personal experience and I am a bit desperate now...

-Kor

Don't know about Typo, but the key for EZ Publish (not always available
in a shared environment) is that safe_mode must be off, or it won't work
at all. Getting the memory limit changed is not a problem -- just ask
your hosting provider. It does take an age to generate pages on first
viewing -- but once they're cached it's fine. I quite like ezpublish as
the output seems to be properly marked up. It also has much more
powerful means of setting permissions for users.

Mambo on the other hand will work with safe_mode on, has a simple admin
interface and is easy to customise, but its output is by default a
horrid mess of nested tables. I think you would need to edit the modules
you are using to take out the <td class="contentheading"> type of thing
and replace it with proper mark up. Strangely enough I was looking for
just this very thing today and found this site which uses Mambo but with
properly marked up output:

<http://www.aurum3.com/>

As for the wysiwyg editor, it's TinyMCE -- isn't it installed by
default? What version of Mambo were you looking at?

Mambo documentation appears to be almost non-existent, but there are
plenty of sites with tutorials, for example here:
<http://www.mamboportal.com/content/section/2/43/>

 

[Kor]

(e-mail address removed) says...

Hi Pete,

Getting the memory limit changed is not a problem -- just ask
your hosting provider.

Well, this hosting provider was unwilling, they said it might cause
problems for other customers.

but its output is by default a
horrid mess of nested tables. I think you would need to edit the modules
you are using to take out the <td class="contentheading"> type of thing
and replace it with proper mark up. Strangely enough I was looking for
just this very thing today and found this site which uses Mambo but with
properly marked up output:

<http://www.aurum3.com/>

Somewhere on a forum I found a posting from someone who also told
about his efforts to make the output standard compliant and div-based
instead of tables. He said he mostly edited
components/com_content/content.html.php

As for the wysiwyg editor, it's TinyMCE -- isn't it installed by
default? What version of Mambo were you looking at?

4.5.1, and no wysiwyg :-(

Mambo documentation appears to be almost non-existent, but there are
plenty of sites with tutorials, for example here:
<http://www.mamboportal.com/content/section/2/43/>

thanks pete, I will look into that

regards, Kor

 

[Pete Gray]

Well, this hosting provider was unwilling, they said it might cause
problems for other customers.

Hmmm, that always sounds to me like a 'We're not exactly sure what we're
doing here, so we're going to play it safe' kind of answer. I've never
had a problem with that. Maybe you need a new hosting provider?

Somewhere on a forum I found a posting from someone who also told
about his efforts to make the output standard compliant and div-based
instead of tables. He said he mostly edited
components/com_content/content.html.php

Thanks for that. The reason I know a little about this is because we're
looking at Mambo as a possible solution, so I've been digging around.

4.5.1, and no wysiwyg :-(

I'm sure it was packaged with the 4.5.1 I downloaded. You could always
upgrade to 4.5.2.

thanks pete, I will look into that

There's also <http://tutorialcenter.net/Tutorials/> with free mambo
tutorials.

 

[Kor]

As for the wysiwyg editor, it's TinyMCE -- isn't it installed by

I'm sure it was packaged with the 4.5.1 I downloaded. You could always
upgrade to 4.5.2.

I downloaded a tutorial from
www.netshinesoftware.com/mambo-tutorial.html
which explains that you have to turn the wysiwyg on manually. Go to
Main admin menu - Mambots - Site Mambots
and then check "No WYSIWYG Editor" (????) and "TinyMCE WYSIWYG
Editor". When I do so, and click 'publish' this is not saved and still
no wysiwyg.

There's also <http://tutorialcenter.net/Tutorials/> with free mambo
tutorials.

Thanks, and I found this:
www.mambosolutions.com/dw_tutorial
www.mamboportal.com