Mambo Open Source/Global configuration

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The global configuration is where all major settings with the mambo system is done. This can only be accessed by superadministrators.

Site

Site offline

When this is active, the whole site will be down, only displaying the DISPLAY LINK TO OFFLINE MESSAGE HERE text and the mambo logo. This is useful when doing heavy maintenance.

Offline message

The corresponding message to the site offline setting. You can enter HTML tags here, as long as they do not contain quotes

System error message

This message is very much like the offline message, but differs in function: it will display when a critical error occurs. This could be the database not working, core files are missing etc. Should contain something useful, as admins e-mail address etc.

Show UnAuthorized Links

Normally, mambo hides links that a user doesn't have permission to see. An example of this is e.g. links that are only for special users. If this setting is on, the normal users will see the link, but will get an error message when they try to browse to its location. If off, the links will simply be hidden.

Allow User Registration

This is very self-explanatory - it enables or disables user registration. If disabled, the "create an account"-link on the login module will be hidden.

Use New Account Activation

When active, users will need to activate their account before they can use it. This is done via e-mail, the user gets a e-mail with an activation link. As soon as the user have browsed that link, the account is active. This is to ensure that the user enters a valid e-mail address.

Require Unique Email

This will ensure that only one user can be registered per e-mail address. A user will then not be available to register new accounts with the same e-mail address.

Debug Site

Turns on and off the error messages of the server. These messages will be loaded in the "debug" module positions. Not very many templates have this position, so this value is a bit "out of date".

WYSIWYG Editor

Chooses the inline editor that will be used in mambo. This applies to every section of mambo where the editor is used.

List Length

The default length of lists. This applies to all pages where one can choose this, as in the admin back-end, a content category list and such similar pages.

Favourites Site Icon

Place the name of a 16x16 icon file here. This will be used as the sites favourite icon. and is located in the "[mambo-root]/images/stories"-folder.

Locale

Language

This will change the language in mambo. Note that this does not apply to the content - that is stored in the database. This will only change the phrases controlled in the language file of Mambo. This includes all system messages. Languages are installed in the Language Manager.

Time Offset

All hours in Mambo is taken from the servers internal clock. If the server is in a different time zone than what the users of the site are in, edit this to offset the time. Use + and - , together with a number value, to do this.

Country Locale

This is the date phrases, such as months and days. They are not in the language file of Mambo, but is installed on the server. You will need to have the correct locale installed on the server, and know its ISO to get the locale you want. The ISO is the value you should enter here.

This subject is so large that it has it's own article. Se the country locale article..

Content

It should be mentioned that all of the parameters here can be overwritten for each section. These settings are in the parameters of the sections menu item. Here, all settings are set to "global", but you can overwrite the settings there. That means that you can have e.g. the back button to show in the global configuration, but edit the parameters of the front page and change it from "global" to "hide". Then, the back button will be hidden on the front page, no matter what the setting in global configuration is.

Linked titles

This setting make the titles linked, and the link is to the full view of the item. This works exactly as the read more button, but will also apply to items that have no text in the main section. See "read more" for details.

Read More link

The read more link is a link that will be placed under the intro to an item in a blog section. A good example of what a blog section is, is the front page component. Here you will see a list of articles, whom have been marked as "show on front page". Then, it is shown on the front page, but only the intro part of the item. All content items in Mambo have two section: intro and main. Only the intro is shown in blog sections. Now, if you write content in the main part of the item, a "read more"-link will be placed underneath it - if the "read more links" setting is set to on. This will take you the full view of the item, with the intro first, then the main section. This is to avoid large texts on the frontpage or any other blog section.

If you do not want a read more link you can use linked titles.

Item rating/voting

This enables a voting system for content items. The users will be able to rate any item from 1 to 5.

Author Names

This displays the author name under the title/headline of a content item. The name is the same as the name of the user that created it. Note that it is not the user name that will be displayed, but the users real name, as entered in user registration. This name can be overwritten in the parameters of each content item.

Created date and time

Will show a date and time stamp of the creation of the template. The date format will be the same as configured in the language file of Mambo. It will display under the author name, and if author name is off and not displated, it will be under the title/headline.

Modified Date and Time

Shows a date and time stamp on when the item. was last edited, in practice the date/time when the item was saved. Will be displayed right underneath the intro text of the item, and underneath the main text if you are in fullview of the item.

Hits

This options shows or hides how many times an article has been read since it was first published. This information is always available via the Administration back end when editing the page, but with this option it is viewable by the website visitors.

PDF icon

Places a icon to the right of the title/headline of the item that opens a auto-generated pdf file in a popup window. This pdf will contain the title/headline, author name, dates and content just as it appears on the site, but without all modules and other parts of the site. It will not render any images that is in the item though. The PDF option is set to be removed in Mambo 4.5.3.

Print icon

Places a icon to the right of the title/headline of the item that opens a auto-generated page in a popup window. This page will contain the title/headline, author name, dates and content just as it appears on the site, but without all modules and other parts of the site. It also contains a print-link in the upper right corner of the popup, that opens the users default print dialog.

Email icon

Places a icon to the right of the title/headline of the item that opens a popup with a e-mail to a friend form. This will e-mail a link to the fullview of the content item to the friends address specified.

It does not have to be sent to a friend, you are free to send it to your enemies as well!

Icons

This setting applies to the above three icons. If set to on, it will display images that correspond to each icons function. If set to off, a text will be there instead, showing "pdf", "print" or "e-mail". These phrases can be edited in mambo's language file.

Table of Contents on multi-page items

This will show a table of contents on items that use the multipage mambot. For usage of this mambot, see the multipage-article.

Back button

This will display a small, texted back button on the bottom of every page created with mambos content generators. It will not show in components etc. The button uses a javascript to go one step back in the users browsers history.

Content Item Navigation

Will display "prev" and "next" buttons at the bottom of items that have two or more items in the category it belongs to.

Database

!warning! !warning! Changing the settings here can make the whole mambo installation unavailable. If so is done, you will need to insert the correct settings directly in the configuration.php file in mambo's root. !warning! !warning!

The values in all these fields depends on how the server is set up, consult the server admin if you don't know the details.

Hostname

This is the hostname of the SQL database. Usually this is localhost.

MySQL username and password

These thow fields should contain the username and password used to connect to the database spesified in the MySQL Database-field.

MySQL Database

The name of the database located on the specified hostname.

MySQL Database Prefix

The database prefix is added to all the database tables. That means that if the prefix is "mos_" and the table is named "components", the table will be named "mos_components" in the database. This ensures that there will be no overlapping if the database is used with multiple applications.

For example, you can have two mambo installations on the same server, as long as they don't have the same prefix. See the article "have more than one mambo installation on the same server" for more details about this.