Papa loves Mambo. But Mambo doesn't love papa so much.

February 6, 2007 4:35 PM

Help me solve a perplexing Mambo dilemma, please!

My Mambo installation, which has quite a lot of content in it, suddenly needs "category icons" a la PHP-Nuke - mainly because, when you're reading a given post, there's no way to tell what category you're in.

I've designed some swank icons, but can't figure out an elegant way to add them. A few approaches that are possible:

1. Hard-code the image into the top of every post, aligned right. I really, really, really don't want to do this. There are tons of posts I'd have to go back through, and more importantly, if you were to browse a given category, you're going to see the exact same icon come up over and over again on the same screen.

2. Hack the PHP to automatically add the icon to each post. Again, I hit the same problem as above - the icon showing up on every post in the category pages.

3. Somehow hack just the index and the individual post templates to automatically add the icon. This makes the most sense to me, but I'm feeling kinda daunted by it.

So, any tips? Any third-party solutions that accomplish this? Any kind soul that knows Mambo inside and out willing to hold my hand and show me where the guts of the index and post templates need the image tag, in exchange for undying gratitude and much good karma?

posted by jbickers to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Are your posts under Sections/Categories? I'm pretty sure that there is a way to add a section or category icon for each article under respective categories. I will try to dig deeper for you but I get confused because I switched to Joomla from Mambo this year and they are... well, they same but different.
posted by bristolcat at 5:40 PM on February 6, 2007

OK. This might help. I hope. I'm looking in Joomla, so it may not be the same in Mambo. If I click on a category to edit it, it has a dropdown box for Image and also Image position. I'm going to guess this will place an image at the top of every article in that column. Perhaps you can try this if Mambo has the same capability.
posted by bristolcat at 5:50 PM on February 6, 2007

OK. This might help. I hope. I'm looking in Joomla, so it may not be the same in Mambo. If I click on a category to edit it, it has a dropdown box for Image and also Image position. I'm going to guess this will place an image at the top of every article in that column. Perhaps you can try this if Mambo has the same capability.

Yes, it adds an image to the top of the category page - so when you click on a category in the main menu, that image appears once at the top of the list that appears.

But as far as I can tell, there is no easy way to add an easy "category identifier" to each article. That's the rub.

Unless I'm using that image wrong ... ? Mambo is kind of a mess documentationally, and a bit all over the place ...
posted by jbickers at 6:02 PM on February 6, 2007

I was afraid of that. I know there is a way to do it. I've seen it. Have you tried searching their forum? Have you considered switching to Joomla? ;-)
posted by bristolcat at 8:32 PM on February 6, 2007

Have you tried searching their forum?

Yeah, to no avail.
posted by jbickers at 3:06 AM on February 7, 2007