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Mambo Users Guide : Core Administrative Functions

Content Item Editing

A Content Item is not strictly a Web page. Content Items can be single-use, existing only on a single page, or they can be global, existing in a certain place on every page in your site. They can exist only in a certain category of pages or only when a user requests them. Instead of managing your Web site by dividing it into separate pages, Mambo divides what you create into Content Items and then creates pages based on how you want those Content Items organized.

As you create content for your site, you’ll spend a great deal of time at the Content Items Manager screen. This is where you create, organize, edit and publish your content items and pages.

The Content Items Manager is not just a list of the pages in your system. You can make things happen to multiple pages at once, like assigning them all searchable tags. You can set the pages to “publish”—that is, make them visible to the users. You can assign pages a section or category, so you have a map of the types of content your site contains. These and more are all crucial features, but the first and most important is the creation and editing of content itself.

Creating a Content Item

In the top right of your Content Items Manager screen, there is a row of gray icons which control editing functions. Click “New” and it will colorize to show that it is active.

You will see an editing screen with title and category attributes as well as two large text-entry fields. The first is “Intro Text” and the second is “Main Text”. “Intro Text” is the first visible part of the Content Item and it is mandatory. It is something of a misnomer, because many Mambo Content Items consist only of Intro Text, with nothing in the main body. The term Intro Text refers to the fact that this part of the content is the first that the user sees. Many Content Items are small enough that it doesn’t seem necessary to separate them into these subcategories, and many larger Content Items are simply inserted entirely into the Intro Text field, leaving the optional Main Text blank.

Using the WYSIWYG editor

In Mambo, you can edit all of your Web pages using the same interface. Templates, Static Content Items, the Home Page, and every other Web page document is primarily written in the same file format.

The TinyMCE Editor is your Web page editor and creator inside Mambo. It is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor which, instead of showing you the HTML code, shows you how your item will look to your visitors as you change it using TinyMCE’s graphical tools. (Within TinyMCE, you can always directly edit the HTML code if you feel it is necessary.)

Hovering your mouse pointer over TinyMCE’s banks of icons will display a short explanation of each icon’s function. You might find the style similar to Microsoft Word and other typesetting programs.

If TinyMCE produces a page that looks different in your browser than it does inside TinyMCE, it can sometimes help to save the item, start another, blank item, and, using the first item as a reference, manually recreate it. TinyMCE is a lightweight, limited Web-based editor, and after extensive editing of the same page, it can get “glitchy”. If you encounter consistent problems, then your content needs the attention of a Mambo administrator.

Content Item Tabs

Just to the right of your TinyMCE editor window, there is a set of tabs which allow you to control the page’s attributes. You can add static images, background and word-wrapped, as well as other, more advanced publishing parameters. Some of these have to do with what the user sees and some of them are for your site’s internal organization. None of the information in the tabs must be manually specified.

Controlling Content Item Hierarchy and Visibility

Content Items aren’t “live” until you “Publish” them. You can create and edit Content Items within Mambo without showing them to your Web site’s users until you click their Publish icon in the Content Items Manager. But choosing which Content Items to Publish is not as simple as clicking the ones you want. Your pages exist in a hierarchy, and what you do to documents at the top affects everything below them.

Most of the documents at the top part of your Content Hierarchy came with your Web site and your Mambo installation. Such things as Templates and your navigation system do not need editing, and they are all “Published” by default. But you can create your own level of hierarchy, by making Content Items depend on other Content Items. Because of this type of organization, it is important to remember that if you want to Publish a Content Item, you must make sure that all items that the Content Item depends on are Published as well.

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Mambo Users Guide: Introduction to Mambo

Introduction

Your new Web site is powered by a piece of software called a Content Management System (CMS). What would be a group of technically demanding, tedious tasks is automated in a CMS, allowing Web site administrators to handle a greater workload. Within the interface of a CMS, you can easily change the look and functionality of your site, as well as change its content and its database of users. Your Web site uses a CMS called Mambo.

This document will help you familiarize yourself with basic Mambo capabilities and tasks. There is a great deal of other documentation on the subject, ranging from interactive Flash tutorials to hefty books. This document is designed to communicate the essentials, quickly and simply. It does not cover advanced operations or Mambo installation/configuration. You will find it the most useful when using Mambo to manage your Web site.

Definitions

CMS: Content Management System. This general term refers to a piece or suite of software dedicated to “managing content”, specifically on the World Wide Web. These systems are versatile and extensible and have a much easier learning curve than manual Web site maintenance. Mambo is one of the most popular.

Database: Generally refers to a mass of content stored in a retrieval system. The database software that Mambo uses is MySQL. MySQL organizes and stores the content of your website, and Mambo talks to MySQL when you talk to Mambo.

Frontend: This refers to the Web site your visitors and users will see, your “storefront”.

Backend: This refers to the Mambo interface that you and other maintainers of your Web site will see.

Element: This is an umbrella term for an addition to Mambo. Elements can be Components, Modules or Templates.

Component: A major element of your Web site’s frontend or backend functionality. Frontend Components can include such things as online stores, discussion forums, or media galleries. Backend Components include the default WYSIWYG HTML editor and the database administrator tools.

Module: A minor element of your Web site’s frontend or backend functionality. Modules can include such things as calendars or context-sensitive help.

Template: A type of page your site includes. Mambo templates can be used to generate new, finished pages with great speed and efficiency. Types of pages might include search pages, user profiles, or submission forms.

Administrative Backend

By default, the URL for your Web site’s administrative backend is http://yoursite.tld/administrator. This should present you with a login page into which you should enter the administrative username and password with which we have provided you.

Once you have logged in, you will see the Admin Interface. There will be a number of menus at the top of the page body. Most of the options in these menus are self-explanatory, and many are outside the scope of this document. Most advanced options can be found in the menus.

Basic administrative areas can be accessed through the group of icons in the central panel. Site-wide preferences can be accessed via “Global Configuration”.

Setting a name
From the Admin Control panel, click “Global Configuration”. The tab highlighted should be “Site” and “Site Name” should appear as an option. Change any of these as you wish. Your changes will not take effect until you click “Save” or “Apply” in the gray icons in the top right corner of your browser window. They both apply your changes permanently, but “Save” also takes you back to the Control Panel after saving.

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