Personal Information

Name: Nick Annies
Nickname: Nick Designer
Residence: Cambridge, UK
Nationality: British
Current Age: 33 (same birthday as Robert!)
Job: Designer for a digital print company
URL: www.mambotemplates.com

Mambo and You

When did you get in contact with Mambo?
I came into contact with Mambo at the beginning of 2003. I spent many hours trawling through the web looking for a good CMS to use for my work clients. I had up to that point been using hardcoded HTML, but I could see the obvious advantages of using a CMS had for both myself and for my clients, as they'd be able to update their own content.  I downloaded many CMS packages, and tried to get them to work, without success. I downloaded Mambo and it worked first time! That made an indelible mark on me, an I have worked with it ever since.

What is your current role in the Mambo community?
I run mambotemplates.com which has free mambo templates for download, and I also work as a core developer focussed on template design and the modification of the template system to a pure CSS and XHTML validated format. I participate where I can in the forums on mambotemplates.com and mamboserver.com.

Do you have any Mambo projects beside the above?
I do a lot of custom template design, and I am working right now on a project that involves the design of 60 templates!  I have promised myself to devote some more time to mambotemplates.com and the MOS community by releasing some more free templates for 4.5, and some articles and tutorials too.

What are you doing, when you are not working for Mambo?
I work day time for a digital print company doing magazine design, website design (using Mambo of course!) and also working with multimedia stuff, like Flash CD's.  I also do a lot of brand design, like logo's and brochures and that kind of thing.

About Mambo

What is Mambo's biggest advantage against other CMS?
Simplicity, especially with the installer in 4.5.  the other key point is the Admin area, it's just so easy to use.

And the biggest disadvantage?
Lack of documentation, especially for newbies.  I get requests all the time from people who want to do the simplest things - things that we take for granted.  I think there needs to be more co-ordination and structure to this, and this is already happening with the Documentation project, but I think it needs to be distilled into a comprehensive Documentation help system that can be distributed with the software. 'Gallery' has finally got some really good documentation, Mambo needs this too.

Where do you see Mambo in the future?
I see Mambo as an extremely robust and attractive CMS for businesses and people who just want to run a website. If we can get the documentation issues sorted out, Mambo will be a market leading CMS, I have no doubt about that.

Your final word to the community?
Have respect for your fellow Mambers!