It used to be, if you wanted a high quality CMS system for your site you would need to pay outrageous licensing fees, sometimes as high as thousands of dollars for each person who would be working on the site. That isn’t the case any more. Mambo offers an award winning system, completely free of charge. You can now get a high quality site online in under an hour for very little money.
1. Choose a web host
This can be the most important step of the process. Mambo will work on almost every host you can find due to it’s very basic requirements. But there are companies that specialize in hosting Mambo and can offer specialized setups and support to help you out. BuyHTTP is one such company. You can choose a Mambo hosting plan from under $5/month. At a minimum, you’ll want to make sure a host has:
- register_globals Off
- safe_mode Off
- PHP 4.4.x or higher
- MySQL 4.x or higher if MySQL 5.x, strict mode shouldn’t be enabled
2. Installing Mambo
After you have chosen your host, it’s time to get Mambo installed. Many hosts offer Fantastico, so it is tempting to use that for installing Mambo. I strongly recommend against that, and spending a few minutes installing it yourself. The first step is downloading the files from the Mambo download site. Extract the file on your computer and upload the files to your website using your favorite FTP program. You’ll need to create a database using your hosting control panel. Contact your host if you are unsure how to do this. Then simply point your browser to yoursite.com/installation and follow the few short steps. Some hosts, like BuyHTTP, will install Mambo for you just for signing up. If you’re more visual, here is a flash tutorial on installing Mambo.
3. Choosing a look for your site
The first thing most people see when they get to your site is your design. Studies suggest you have about 7 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention and get them to stay. For that reason it is very important to have an effective design for your site. Mambo comes with a couple templates you can choose from. There are also a large number or free templates you can download from sites like www.mambohut.com. There is also a very active commercial design community offering templates for very low rates. Sites like TemplatePlazzaThis is an affiliate link. doylelewis.com receives a commission for referrals generated by this link. The fact that the link is an affiliate link does not change our opinion about the referred to product or service, but you can support the doylelewis.com team by using this link, if you consider the purchase of the product or services because of our post. Thank you., MamboDesign and MamboSolutions all offer great template clubs. BuyHTTP offers most new accounts a free template from the TemplatePlazza template club.
Installing templates is very simple. Log in to your Mambo admin panel and to to Installer -> Universal Installer. Browse to the template’s installer package on your computer and upload and install it. If you’re more visual, here is a flash tutorial on installing a template in Mambo.
4. Start adding content to your site
After you get people’s attention, you need to keep it. The best way to do that is with compelling content. Here are a few flash tutorials to get you started:
You should be able to complete these 4 steps in under an hour and be well on your way to a successful site using Mambo. More tips will be coming on getting the most out of your Mambo site.
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