madicon migrates site to Mambo

by Volker Weber

Manfred Dillmann, best known for his Notes RSS reader, migrates his site to Mambo on top of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. I like it when a true Notes guy uses the best available tool instead of defaulting to Domino.

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Comments

I had pointed you to the very same link a while ago, commenting on this post but no reaction from you nor your readers.
I was just wondering wether you missed it at the time of posting, or if nobody considered the software as suitable.

Pieterjan Lansbergen, 2005-01-02

Maybe this is the reaction. ;-)

I did not consider Mambo at that time since it would have been complete overkill for the Hippopotamus site, that - besides - was already done without a CMS. But I might actually build a site just for kicks.

Volker Weber, 2005-01-02

Thank you for your post, Volker.

Because I am very new to Apache, MySQL and PHP, I really don't know if that are the "best available tools" versus Domino as a webserver...

There were two main reasons for switching: performance and stability.

But stop - with this two factors I dont't mean the Domino server itself. The Domino server runs very stable. My "old" website was connected to the Internet via a DSL line (max. 128 KBit upstream) with static ip address. THAT connection was to slow and sometimes very instable... ;-)

Manfred Dillmann, 2005-01-02

Congrats Manfred, for your successful change to Mambo.
I've used ConPresso as CMS so far. It is good if you do not need many features - and it is free for non commercial use. Well – I had to code some php extensions to have some features which are not covered by ConPresso (but would be available in Mambo). If I would start with a new website with CMS requirements, I would use Mambo. Btw, the c't magazine 05/2004 (page 162) has tested several free CMS including Mambo and ConPresso.

Michael Woehrer, 2005-01-02

I'm currently evaluating the DX 3 content engine for Domino:
http://www.dominoblog.com/
The current Beta1 has all features that a modern CMS needs to have. So there are alternatives based on Domino that can deliver XHTML/CSS validating pages (Domino out of the box does not!).
If you are a Domino shop, it might be easier to switch to a Domino based solution in the end. The mentioned project seems to offer the best of both worlds: Open Source and Domino. It's Domino web server/storage based, but web standards compliant if you care a little bit when you design your pages.
As always: it depends. If you have to pay big bucks for Domino usage, you only have an open source choice. There are many many other projects out there. It's a matter of choice.

Uwe Brahm, 2005-01-03

For me, the "best available tool" is the one that let me do what I need easily, in a reasonable amount of time and justifiable cost. This can be Domino because it is the system I am most familiar with but e.g. for E-Mail I switched to Thunderbird some months ago and my mails run through one of my standard Linux boxes because it does everything I need (and with the native power of Spamassassin).
A website can be a business card so if I am a Domino consultant I would at least think about partially using it. At least I am not yet ready to apologise for using it.

Henning Heinz, 2005-01-03

Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP and Mambo are free. You can run them really cheap in shared hosting or on your own machine. We are talking about 10 to 30 a month including your own domain, almost unlimited mail, ample web space and traffic included.

How long can you run this setup before you paid for an additional Domino Utility Server license?

Volker Weber, 2005-01-03

My Domino hosting costs me between £11 and £25 per month, including mail aliasing. The amount varies due to bandwidth used over and above my basic allowance, plus the variable USD and GBP exchange rate.

I have my domain “parked” with my hosts, who offer me free hosting for the first 1GB of bandwidth per month, together with more MB than I will ever need for the Domino databases that make up my on-line presence. It’s a good deal, and I can use the technology I know the best...

Would I ever switch? Of course I would. But not necessarily because of anything Domino does or doesn’t do, more because I‘d like to see what else is out there, learn about it, and make the most of it. But at the same time, someone would have to offer me a good deal to switch to something else — I don’t have the time or computer resource to host my own stuff at the moment. I suspect that’s much the same for many of my fellow “Domino Bloggers” too! :o)

Ben Poole, 2005-01-03

I am not sure if a simple Express license (about 150 Euros initially, renewal cheaper) might not do the job if you do not need additional authenticated users (but that leaves the Designer as this is not included). I am also not a Business Partner but I think that there have been "Run your own Business" licenses in the past (that is why I wrote Domino consultant and not John Doe). I would need the licenses anyway so as long as I earn some money with Domino I save nothing using LAMP.
If we talk about "Everyone should run Everything on Domino" then I agree that Open Source/other solutions work much better. For a Domino shop I think there are still valid reasons to choose Domino (or something else).
Movable Type does neither make someone an "A-Level Blogger" (read that here some days ago) nor is it a guarantee for a nice looking website (but it helps).
As I cannot understand why some Notes guys say, they ignore websites, just because they are not build on top of Domino, I do not understand why it is cool nowadays just not using it.

Henning Heinz, 2005-01-04

Henning, Mambo gives you unlimited authenticated users for free. No need to fool around with licenses. "I would need the licenses anyway" sounds like a funny calculation.

Ben, 1 Gigabyte is gone here within 3 days. With Apache's mod_rewrite it would not last for a single day. For 20 GBP you can have your dedicated LAMP server here, including lots of GB traffic. For shared hosting we are talking 5 GBP.

I maintain that LAMP plus Mambo is a smarter way to build a website given the hosting infrastructure available.

Volker Weber, 2005-01-04

Part of my (very small) business is providing hosting infrastructures (for LAMP and/or Domino) and I do not want to advertise here but I enjoyed the discussion and was able to express my opinion. Thank you for that.

Henning Heinz, 2005-01-04

Henning, agreed :o)

Ben, 1 Gigabyte is gone here within 3 days.

Volker, I'll certainly bear that in mind should my site become popular one day. LOL.

Ben Poole, 2005-01-04

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