How to use the web Site Builder

Everyone wants a visually pleasing web site that is always up-to-date, and that has regularly updated content.  One of the things that web site marketing people will always tell you is that web sites that are constantly updating their content get indexed by the search engines more often.

The problem is that unless your are a web designer by trade, who has lots of free time of their hands, who has the knowledge or the time to keep their web site on the cutting edge?

One way is to pay someone else to maintain your web site.  For those of more modest means, there is a type of software called a "Content Management System", or CMS for short.  At NWD Hosting we offer five different CMSes -- our built-in Site Builder, based on Mambo -- and the well regarded Joomla!, PHPnuke, PostNuke, and TYPO3 packages.

Please note: In order to use any CMS, you must have your account enabled to support a database.  Premium and Merchant accounts come with database functionality as a standard feature.  Starter and Shared hosting accounts can add database functionality to their existing hosting packages for a small additional monthly fee.

Additional resources about Mambo

Below are a list of resources to help new web site owners get started with using Mambo.  We are not affiliated with, nor do we guarantee the quality or accuracy of any of these resources. That said, these are companies and individuals who specialize in supporting Mambo:

• Mambo project web site
• Mambo users' forum
• Interactive tutorials by DemoDemo on using Mambo
• Mamboportal - a web site dedicated to all things Mambo
• An introduction to Mambo
• Mambo Documentation  (opens in a new window)
• Blogs, Posts & other stuff on Mambo

The standard Mambo "look and feel" can feel a little bland.  The links below are for companies that specialize in selling templates and other add-ons that can be used to change the default "look and feel" of a web site that uses Mambo.

• Mambo Add-ons & Optional Features
• Components, Modules, & Mambots Resources
• Template Museum  (Mambo templates)
• The MamboDev Template Club  (more Mambo templates)

On the Mambo vs. Joomla! debate:  During the closing months of 2005, a dispute arose between the corporate parent of the Mambo open source project (Miro International) and the core Mambo development team.  After much discussion, the core Mambo developers felt that they needed to break away from the newly formed Mambo Foundation and decided to fork the Mambo code base and create their own new CMS called Joomla!  At the time of this note (in March 2006), the Mambo CMS and Joomla CMS are almost identical in features and functionality.  We are expecting that over time this will change, and for now we have no intention of changing the default Site Builder application from Mambo to Joomla.  Either CMS may be installed into your hosting account, but the "Site Builder" button in our web control panel ONLY supports Mambo, at this time.

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