After a friend introduced me to the notion of using open-source content management systems to build websites, I investigated on the net, and started a site using Mambo. I came to really like this CMS, since built a couple of other Mambo sites, added it to this site, and recommended to friends; and more recently migrated one of my sites to Joomla!

But when it comes to making sites search engine friendly - ie Search Engine Optimization (SEO), so they are readily navigated and index by search engine spiders, and pages rank well in, say, Google, Yahoo and MSN Search, Mambo has some quirks that may be worth a little explanation.

Firstly, though, the essentials of optimising a Mambo site for search engines are exactly as for all sites, and as I've briefly covered in Doc Martin's free advice on search engine optimization.

So, what are the quirks? (I explain a little here; but note I don't have commercial sites; bring a little revenue, but as yet, not worth investing in custom coding and so on - which would be best.)

Advice on Search Engine Optimization - SEO - for Mambo

SEF URLs: keywords may help; duplicate URLs a big no-no

Raw Mambo URLs include numbers and characters like "&" strewn. Mambo has an SEF ("Search Engine Friendly") URL option that works on much server software, reducing the clutter to mainly numbers and backslashes. To me, though, even with this option on Mambo 4.5.2, generates Search Engine Unfriendly URLs, as each link created can result in an extra URL, through addition of a number known as Itemid.

There are better options. These will create URLs with words, usually drawn from titles of categories, and item titles; may help search engines, but certainly more human friendly. Though I've often seen a commercial solution promoted, II have used a freebie - Xaneon Extensions.

Maybe little boost to search engine rankings from having words instead of numbers in URLs, but the resulting URLs are more human friendly, and can eliminate Itemids problem (tho take some care, lest a module, say, generate different URL for a content item). I unpublished a few modules - such as the related articles module - as they gave "wrong" URLs.

Page Title Important

Mambo has option for using dynamic page titles, which works very well for items; components such as Simpleboard now also generate decent tibles.

 For even better titles with Joomla!, use the SEF Patch - can generate page titles that are simply article titles, without site name (can choose to have site name in page titles, but first ask if you really need it?)

<h1>, <h2> Tags

In Mambo, it's a bit of a pain to assign <h1> and <h2> tags to titles of Items etc. Need to amend some fairly deep "code" (and I'm no coder); when I tried with Mambo, didn't work out too well. Instead, I've added definitions for <h1> and <h2> to css for templates I'm using, and can then set these tags using editor (htmlarea3).

Internal Links

With Mambo items generally linked to from home page via links to Section, then Category, then Item, I rather suspect pagerank for homepage is diluted by time you've reached the Item (seen a little evidence of this); effect also same from other pages that may have decent pagerank. To try and counter this, I've started using extra menus with direct links to Items (articles).

Should also aim to have just one link to home page, which may well be frontpage component: don't want to also show links to the component, and/or to index.php. One solution is to unpublish main menu, retaining frontpage component as the top link on it.

Coding

Search engines are happier with pages with good coding, that meets standards; maybe MSN places more emphasis on this than most.  Ideally, then, reduce or eliminate non-standard coding from templates (varying from one to another), editors; can check pages with w3c validator.

I've had occasional problems with Mambo - at times making me think, "Whoa - that could be the end of it!" - but so far managed, with help, to find solutions.

mos_sessions Table Corrupted 

Today, after server trouble, found a site wasn't working; instead, pages showed an error message, beginning:
"DB function failed with error number 1016
Can't open file: 'mos_session.MYI'. (errno: 145)"

I searched for this text with Google, and found a forum thread with a post including a fix, by space-addiction. Fix was a few lines of code, for MySQL database:

 #
 # Table structure for table `mos_session`
 #
 DROP table IF EXISTS mos_session;
 CREATE TABLE `mos_session` (
 `username` varchar(50) default '',
 `time` varchar(14) default '',
 `session_id` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '0',
 `guest` tinyint(4) default '1',
 `userid` int(11) default '0',
 `usertype` varchar(50) default '',
 `gid` tinyint(3) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
 PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`),
 KEY `whosonline` (`guest`,`usertype`)
 ) TYPE=MyISAM;
 #
 # Dumping data for table `mos_session`
 #

Using phpmyadmin, via cPanel, I checked the database, and sure enough found that the mos_session table was corrupt. Instead of trying repair - in case it messed things up even further, I tried running the above code as a mysql query. Happily, this worked. Phew!

Buttons not working after upgrade to 4.5.2

I had problem with New button, with Firefox; after noticing short note on Mambo site, I learned this wasn't real problem with button, but with cache. I emptied the cache, and button worked fine.

Mass Mail not found in 4.5.2

I did some searching for mass mail function after upgrade to 4.5.2; couldn't find it. Happily, via google, came upon this post on Mambers.com, giving solution. You have to also execute a line for sql tables:

 INSERT INTO `mos_components` VALUES (0, 'Mass Mail', '', 0, 0, 'option=com_massmail&hidemainmenu=1', 'Send Mass Mail', 'com_massmail', 0, 'js/ThemeOffice/mass_email.png', 0, '');

- I tried this (via phpmyadmin, with cPanel), and works fine.

When I started with Mambo 4.5.0, I didn't like the way every page's title was simply the site name: negative for success in search engines - other than for success with searches including the site name. I dug around on forums, came across page title hack, which involved a php file, and need to change some code in template. After some trial and error, found this worked very well.

Now, Mambo 4.5.2 has built-in option for dynamic page titles - good progress, but there's still room for improvement.