Archive for the 'Web design' Category

How to edit Mambo Frontpage Settings

Sunday, August 20th, 2006

Editing the settings of Frontpage of a Mambo site has never been easy as the front page manager does not give you the opportunity to do so. Using frontpage manager you can hardly publish / unpublish the content-items in the front page or set the orders in which they apprear in the front page. But the setting likes number of content-items to be displayed in the frontpage, or content-items per row to be displayed in your home page can not be changed using the frontpage manager.So i searched the net and got to links that tell us specifically what need be done to edit the settings of your home page.

The links cited atop are enough but here is a quick quide of how to do the same.

Step: 1 - Log on to Mambo Administrative Control Panel.

Step:2 - Click Menu -> Mainmenu

The manu manager opens the mainmanu items for you to edit.
Step:3 - Click Home ( The first menu item by default)

A page opens ” EDIT MENU ITEM :: Component ( Frontpage)

Step:4 - Now tweak with the parameters to edit the settings.

Like : Setting #intro = 10 will display introduction of ten items in the frontpage ( home page)

Setting Columns = 3 will display three columns per row (i.e. three content items per row )

This is how it should be done.

Uselink links:

http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?t=13437

http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?t=16767

For Mambo Version 4.5.2

Free Newsletter Component in Mambo CMS

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

Here is the link to Letterman Version 1.2.3 Newsletter package to be installed as a Mambo Component.

Download Letterman Newsletter. 

Download Letterman Newsletter (Opens in new window).

Download the source files and save it to your hard disc.

Now install the component first (com_lettermansubscribe_1.2.3.tar.gz
), then install the module(mod_lettermansubscribe_1.2.3.tar.gz).

Once installation is done,  simply publish the Letterman Newsletter module.

Now your visitors can subscribe/unsubscribe to your newsletter service.

In the backend as an administrator you can modify the configuration, compose, send and publish the newsletters and manage your subscribers.

The entire process of installation will hardly take few minutes as the file size is very small.

Domain or sub-domain hosting

Monday, June 19th, 2006

This is for Newbies, veterans please skip this article.

When i tried out my first website,as a starter, i really did not bother much for domain/ sub domain hostings and all, what i was needed, a free webhost to test my scripts.

I found one, it offered me a sub-domain hosting in the form mywebsite.hostname.com, it worked to test run  my scripts but the problem arose when i entered the second part of the life of an Webmaster, i.e. Site Promotion.

I found few reputed directories, refused to accept the url, being hosted in a sub-domain.

Also, i got plenty of suggestions from experienced webmasters for try using my own domain name and not a sub-domain name, as it becomes difficult to get good ranking in search engine with a sub-domian for competitive keywords.

I also gradually realised few more cause of worries and frustration. My host went down for few days. Though the site was hosted for experimentation, but it got few repeat visitors since its beginning and I thought that it was gone forever.

So, anytime, your host decides to stop extending hosting support, you have no alternative but to shut your site down!

I, therefore, strongly recommend you all to go for your own domain name, hardly costs few dollars for a whole year, and better seeking for a free webhost that will allow Domain hosting, if you can’t afford to pay the hosting charges.
Hope that helped.

Great website ideas

Sunday, June 18th, 2006

Then how long will you search the net to get an idea for your new website? From Newbie to the veteran ones, everyone seems to spend some moments looking for great ideas on website theme.

And you need to spend some time, for some research work on Keywords to get atleast a guideline for website themes.

Undoubtedly tools like Overture gives us a goodline regarding keywords and hits that it receive on a monthly basis. But that can only be treated as effective once you have selected your website theme, the subject of your website. Unless and until you fix up a subject, it is really not going to do anything good for you.
Couple of months ago, not recently though, i found people selling ideas ( and sometimes ready-to-use website as well) to help you earn direct without wasting any time. I’ve seen people claims that they will teach you how to create a website in a minute on any subject without knowing anything about that. They, i doubt, would teach you most condemned copy-paste technique, that is copy the content from a website and paste it in your own. Also they might be suggesting you to use FREE articles available in the internet in plenty as your webpage content But gone are those days of implementing short-cut technique as Google seems to be more severe where issues like duplicate content comes into play. So prima facie requirement of your website must be that either you write your own content or hire some experienced content writer to do the task for you. So far as majority of the webmasters are involved, in their starter stage, they can hardly afford money to pay to a content writer.

The only possibility that remains is that you have to write your own content. Yes, it must be unique, fresh and informative and that will force your visitors to come to visit your site more often. Content is the key element for success of a website, as i have mentioned in my earlier post as well, that a good content rich website not only makes the crawlers love it but also provides a good user experience. So good content has two-fold effect to say the least.

Once it is certain that you are the content writer for your website, it immediately suggests that you must focus on a subject in which you are most conversant. The subject must relate to your day-to-day activity, it may be anything, but must have a high degree of relevance to your daily life. Only then you can write great content for your website based on your hard earned real life experinece.

Hosting a website is not that tough now-a-days with so many FREE/Cheap web hosting providers, freewares for almost all types of websites and above all great assistance around the internet for codes/site promotional guides and many other necessary tools. But to publish a quality one, one that has earned a high degree of respect from the visitors is not that easy unless and untill you do something unique and of your own.

Hosting a unique website is the dream that all webmasters see, probably since his first website and ultimately realise after few months of hard work that it is his real life experience in any field that can make a website unique.

How can i say that? Look, life-style is more or less same if you consider it in a broad spectrum. Few joys, few sorrows, few gains and few pains that make it perfect one. But the difference lies in the way you see it, using your own experience, your own logic . It is a matter of views that differ a lot from one person to other even while focussing on the same event.

So there may be thousands of websites on a topic, but yours are bound to be unique because you will be telling the same subject the way you have seen it, based on your own experience, own realisation and feelings. And that is definitely going to differ from the rest.

I have seen few great website publishers and how they have delivered their field level experience while publishing the site. One on widget, one on Public Transportation system and many more on different other subjects, but each one is successful as what the webmaster writes, is based on his own hard earned experience.

You can buy anything, a Bunglow, a Car may be an Island and what not in exchange of money. But you cannot buy experience. You have to earn that, and once earned that is unique for you, just capitalise that while publishing a new website.

Few examples . if you are a teacher, you may consider publishing a website on the subject you teach at school. For a auto-dealer, he may consier Cars as his subject. For a bank manager, he can consider publishing a mortgage site.Just like that, simple, stay closer to your real life experience and focus on it. You are definitely going to create the best website on that subject so far as content is concerned.

Good luck.

Edit or remove Footer information in Mambo CMS

Saturday, June 17th, 2006

For any reason whatsoever, if you think you need to edit footer information , i.e. the text like Copyright Mambo .. Mambo is a free software…, appearing at the bottom of each page of your website, the easiest way to do that is to search for the file:

/public_html /includes/footer.php

Change its permission, if necessary, to allow you to write.

Open it in edit mode. At the begining of that file you shall see the Mambo Copy right information. Keep the lines within  PHP Tags intact.

Now you are ready to change the default copyright information with your own.

Simply Cut whatever is written after that Closing PHP TAG and paste it in a text editor for probable future use, if necessary.

Now write  your copyright infformation like this using standard HTML:

Copyright 2006 Your Company Name

Save the file footer.php, once the editing is done.

If you have changed the permission, restore the file permission to default, usually 644.

This was an easy-to-implement guide for editing/removing footer information in Mambo.

Cheers.

Colors

Thursday, June 15th, 2006

While designing a website the thing that haunt me the most is color!

There are some serious discussions regarding the looks and feels of the website but so far as color goes, nothing seems to be adequate.

So let us better learn few basics.

Primary Color

R= Red; B= Blue; Y=Yellow

Color Code

In Hex color code  the  first two  hex digit stand for amount of  Red

the next two hex digit stand for amount of Green

and the last two hex digit stand for amount of Blue

Hex digits are designated as :

0( No/Minimum intensity),1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F(=15 , Maximum Intensity)
So a hex color code #FFFFFF means  full intensity for  Red (FF), Green(FF) and Blue(FF), the combinatioin is definitely going to product white.

You can learn more about it here!
Complementary Color

The colors standing opposite to each other in color wheel . When used side by side, the combination looks brighter. So if you want a bright, catchy look go for that.

Use Non-Dithering Colors:

These colors will look like the same (unchanged) on all browsers and all  screen resolution settings.

Please see here for a list!

Also consider using Multiple shades of the same Color
You can check here to find  suitable shed for your website!

For a matching color scheme you can visit ColorSchemer.com

Thumb Rule :

  • In any case do not use more than three to four colors
  • Use contrast color to distinguish the Text with the background
  • Check your chosen scheme with your friends and family members

Cheers!

MamboBoard Native Mambo Forum

Monday, June 5th, 2006

To install a forum you may consider the native Mambo forum, i.e. MamboBoard.
Just follow the steps below:

  • Download the Mamboboard package.
      • Now save the file to your hard drive.
  • Log on to the Mambo Administration Page
      • Go to section component>>Install/Uninstall
      • You will see a page “Install New Component
      • In the upload package file section browse to locate the file you have just downloaded.
      • Now click on the button Upload & Install.
  • Your board is now ready for operation.

Creating a Menu Item for the New Board

  • To create a menu item for the new board do the following
      • Go to Menu>>Main Menu
      • Click the New button to add a new menu item
      • Select component as the type of menu items and click Continue button.
      • Type Forum as the menu name ( or whatever you want it to see!)
      • From the component drop down list, choose MamboBoard.
      • Click the Save button to finish the process.

Your Board is now ready with a link pointing to it from your homepage.

Configuration of this board is almost similar to any other boards we see. And anyone familiar with other boards like SMF will be able to manage that.

More reading:

You can see here a pictorial representation of how to add menu items in mambo:

Mambo- How to add menuitems

Also Membo provides you with another add-on component for Bad-Word filtering. For that we have to download the package files from:

Bad-word filter

The installation of this is pretty easy and just like the MamboBoard component  you have installed few minutes ago. Still this link gives a good guide for installing Bad-word filter.

Ok that’s all for now.

Bye.

Mambo - User Guidelines

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

An open source content management systems, Mambo, has earned good reputation for being so much user friendly, yes it provides the webmasters a lot of flexibility in design.

There are many stuff in the internet that provides similar guideline, but still i think this small description of essential steps will help you to configure it the way you like.

  • Installation: Use Fantastico to install Mambo, it is easy and simple
  • Global Configuration : This is the first place you must look at after the installation is complete.
    • You have to adjust access privileges of configure.php file ( installed in Mambo installation directory) to change the options. So log on to your CPanel to do the same first
    • Then inside the Administrator page go to Site>>Global configuration . This will help you to set global configuration.
  • Pages are arranged in the form of Section/Category/Items
    • For example your section => News, category => latest news, item => Football world cup . Here item is the actual content of the webpage you will be creating
  • Once you have completed atleast one section/category/item circle, you need to add the section as a menu item. To do so simply go to Menu=>> MainMenu and add a new menu item which will link to the newly created section.
  • That is all you require to do to create pages with this unique CMS

Adding Adsense code in Mambo:

  • Different people suggests different methods, but to me, it works fine.
  • Go to Site>>Global Configuration
  • In the site tab change the option for WYSIWYG Editor: No WYSIWYG Editor
  • Now Save changes and go to Modules >> Site Modules and click New button to create a new module
  • Give it a title, like Adsense Top. Select Position = banner.
  • Paste your Adsense code in the content section ( I have used 486X60 banner)
  • Save changes, your Adsense ads will be running.

Special Controls

  • You can publish/unpublish a category/section/items by simply clicking the icon under Published Tab against each of the category/section/item.
  • You can place your latest item on HomePage by simply clicking the icon under Front Page Tab against each of the category/section/item

Other Feature

  • Built-in Banner manager to manage your banner advertisements.
  • Instant Poll
  • Different Templates to meet up your demands
  • In built webstatistics

The Conclusion

  • If you are seriously considering hosting a website, please do not hesitate to select Mambo, the best one for flexibility, ease of operation and professional looks.

Here is the link for Mambo Download

Ugly websites

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

I am not here to give you a list of websites that are ugly and indeed i’m not the best person to do that. i’m here to suggest you some beautiful sight of an ugly websites. As it has been discussed in many other forums, these websites may be the king-pin for online business. Amature simple looks, easy navigation and absense of fancy javascripts may increase the credibility of these website. I was in search of some support for my websites (which are undoubtedly the world’s ugliest sites, because i cannot create anything decent, oops!) and got few links.

Believe me, these people are saying that ugly sites made $10,000 a day from Google Adsense! Can’t believe? Ok, just check here.

You can also check out this post in flyteblog.com
And this one from SiteReference.com must have reached your mailbox already, and if not, here is the link

As it has been stated in that post, you may note the following points:

1) Ugly sells

2) Conveys trust

3) Easy to use

And finally a word of caution:

Ugliness By Application – Not By Rule

Little modification may i suggest, please read it like:

“ugliness by inability and not by rule ”

Cheers!


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