With Mambo 4.5.1 the template engine has changed again. The developers aim is to prepare the system for the upcoming changes in Mambo 4.5.2 and Mambo 4.6. At the moment all 4.5 templates do run inside Mambo 4.5.1 without any problems. But it is recommended to change your templates to the new functions to stay upwards compatible.

To make this as easy as possible for every designer, Mamboportal.com has written a small tutorial for you. We show you detailed, which changes have to be made to get your template ready for 451.

One of the biggest barriers in MOS template development is the missing CSS style guidelines for MOS templates. During the development process of MOS 4.5 many style sheet changes confused designers even more. To bring some light into the dark I compiled the following CSS guide.

Most upcoming template developers get stuck the first time, when it comes to placing the core elements. I have compiled a list of all currently existing tags, which should make placing elements a copy & paste job.

The header is a mysterious thing even for expirenced MOS template designers. Mamboportal gives you a brief overview about the elements of the templates header.

The latest version of Mambo Open Source comes with a handy little installer script. This will make it easy for every upcoming webmaster to use MOS for his site. In my first preview of MOS 4.5 I will guide you through the installation process.

While I worked on my new template called AkoBluePortal I made some kind of development diary. I made a screenshot on every stage the template was in and wrote a small text about my steps. This is the result of it all. Maybe it is helpfull for some of you, who are planing to do their own templates.

Normaly Mambo displays Announcement's on every page of your website. That's fine for some people, but most of the webmasters want their announcement only shown on the startpage or specific page. Mambo currently (4.0.13) lets you no choice on which page to display the announcement so you have to use a template trick to show it only on the startpage.

A very common question which i'm asked is how to hide the right blocks on content pages. Naturally Mambo don't hide the complete right block. Only within a few components like the poll the admin can change if this modules block should be displayed on certain pages.