CMS v Dreamweaver

**binable** · 31-01-05

Does anyone have any views on the best software to use to create the sort of websites suitable for affiliate work i.e. price comparison sites or content led sites carrying affiliate ads?

I was thinking specifically of anyone's views on using a CMS such as Mambo in comparison with just using Dreamweaver.

Thanks in advance.

**Shane** · 31-01-05

Just spent about best part of 2 weeks evaluating mambo..

It's a very capable piece of work but I have a theory it was designed by a bunch of nice polite exceedingly well educated guys wearing tweed jackets as it's just so damn annoying and a bit hard to figure out how it all fits together... and seems as though it's areas are named a bit too technically/wrong

It did nearly everything we wanted but not quite, withough hacking it to bits and thus risking problems further down the line, so we have to build the next site from scratch now

which is about 250 hours work by the look of it.. eek:

It's got plenty of free extensions/mambots/modules too and shopping carts etc.

For simple sites though it's a good program, and I'd reccommend it for everyone to look at (if you got plenty of spare time that is):

**ChrisM** · 31-01-05

I agree with Shane entirely - it just feels to me like its a great idea that just wasnt quite thought through properly.

It takes far too long to understand, and once you think you're there it does exactly what you don't expect again.

**Matt Seigneur** · 01-02-05

Great i've just installed Mambo on my site!! and paid $100+ for an extension....
.. Luckily it's a brand new site
is there anything better out there I can switch to?

**Shane** · 01-02-05

Mambo is good so it may be suitable for what you want it for, for us it was for a big site with lots of features and things and we would have been risking trouble down the line as we would have been hacking and slashing at the code to make it do what we wanted.

Depends on your needs.. It probably will be very capable of doign what you want if it isn't complex so stick with it and have a play, I will use it at some stage on other sites myself

**Matt Seigneur** · 01-02-05

i basically want to do this

enable people to add their own reviews (and/or photos) in a specific category (selecting from a drop-down box) so they can then then be added to the bottom of a specific page that corresponds to the category selected.

was posted here

**JohnC** · 02-02-05

the awesom componant for mambo is great allows you to add amazon product lists with ease

**uklejon** · 02-02-05

I agree with Shane, Mambo is a little limited in certain ways and a tad confusing to get to grips with at first.

I use mambo as PHP coding confuses the hell out of me 'cos i work with ASP all day

so i'm not gonna even start building my own.

If you need extra modules visit http://mamboforge.net/

Themes can be found at mambohut.com

Mambo's great if you don't want to do too much.

Must say one disadvantage of the latest version is there's no database back up so you'll need to do this through PHPMyAdmin.

All in all though Mambo is good, you can layout things almost how you like it. but it does lack a few features.

If you lok at the add-on modules, i'm sure theres a review mod there.

Jon (carol's other half)

**Matt Seigneur** · 02-02-05

Thanks overall I think i'll give it a go. however...

Mambo's great if you don't want to do too much.

that sentence scares me a little, what do you mean by 'too much'??

I want to create a rather large site with lots of reviews, will this be a problem?

**uklejon** · 02-02-05

You won't have a problem with size. Mambo will handle as many pages/reviews as you can throw at it.

By too much , i mean if have an idea for a section on the site and there's no module to do that section, then you'll end up having to hack it to death which then means you may be better off designing something from scratch, but as Shane said it would takes hours & hours.

If you can find all the features you want from Mambo then it will handle plenty of traffic and pages.

Quick tip: if you have the latest version, when you design your first menu make sure the very first menu item is a frontpage componant, if you don't nothing with appear on your front page. This stumpedme the first time i used it!!

Jon