Adding PowerPoint to Mambo

Adding PowerPoint presentations to your Mambo CMS site can be done in several ways. I show you how to use each of four common methods and also give you the Pros and Cons for each. Choose the method that suits your site best.

• The quickest way is to upload your powerpoint presentation to Slideshare and use the code from Slideshare to embed the presentation in a content item (page) within Mambo.

  PROS: Quick and easy

  CONS: The presentations are publicly accessible on Slideshare and some firewalls block Slideshare content.

• The slightly longer way is to put the content directly inside Mambo. To do this, open your presentation inside PowerPoint. Select the option for "save to web" (the wording may be a bit different depending on your version of PowerPoint).
  Don't choose the option of saving to one single web page - you want PowerPoint to output the presentation in the same way as the original, ie. as a set of files.
  ie. File->Save As (change the type to Web Page) -> Publish.
  Powerpoint will create a folder with the name of the presentation in it, plus an HTML file. For example, if your presentation is called mambo.ppt you will end up with mambo.htm and a folder called mambo files.

  Next, create a new folder with a name that is meaningful to you. The folder name should be in lowercase. So, you would have, for example, "mambo" (without the quotes). Move the PowerPoint-generated "mambo files" and "mambo.htm" into the "mambo" directory you created.

  Upload this entire directory to your server, inside the same site root that you are using for Mambo.
  (I know it sounds complicated but after you have done this once, it will be a breeze!)

  Now, login to the administrator panel for Mambo. Create a content item and add any introductory text you want. Add a link to your presentation's HTML file, using the full URL.
  eg. Using the same "mambo.htm" example as before, your link would look something like:
  <a href="http://example.com/mambo/mambo.htm" target="_blank"> Click here to go to the presentation </a>
  The target attribute is important as this will load up the presentation in a new window of the browser.

  When someone clicks on the link the presentation will load in a new browser window. They will be able to navigate through the presentation the same way they do when it is still in .ppt format.

  PROS: the presentation is kept just on your site and is not blocked by firewalls, so everyone can see it. The presentation is also able to be accessed by search engines.

  CONS: it takes a little more time to do.

• You can also download OpenOffice, open the .ppt file there and save it as a .swf file. This creates a Flash .swf that you can then embed into a content item.

  PROS: Easy enough to do.

  CONS: The generated Flash content is not able to be indexed by search engines;
  Flash/swf is often blocked by firewalls;
  Viewing this depends on the visitor having browser plugins that can handle it.

• If you have only one PowerPoint presentation you can also save the files, as above, or load the presentation onto Google Docs and use the wrapper function to display the files that have been converted to web pages. This works ok for one presentation but is not suitable for providing several presentations.

  PROS: It works for one presentation

  CONS: Needs htaccess directives to make sure visitors stay inside the wrapper;
  Search engines have trouble indexing content inside a wrapper;
  Browser support for iframes varies;
  Can also be blocked by firewalls and some browser blockers so is not accessible to everyone.

Do you use a different method for adding PowerPoint presentations?

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