Mambo static content

First off, I think you shouldn't underestimate these LAMP(Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)-based software packages. Ideally I prefer working with Java, it's more scaleable, international (supports Unicode natively etc.), more object-focused, but for small things like these projects I'm working on at the moment, something like Mambo is just fine.
Anyway, I wanted to comment on something specific, for my own notes. Will be boring for everyone else, so I suggest you read something more interesting, for example.
Still here? OK. Must mean that you have a vested interest in reading about my tribulations with the Mambo install from directory feature! Here we are: I have tried to install the Mambo component for managing static content, because I wanted to have some documents/files on my site that would be accessible by URL but would not be intercepted by Mambo. If I tried to hit any static pages, it always got grabbed by Mambo which then served up the homepage. There is a component for Mambo called Static Content, which appears to work OK on my own server, but when I try to install from directory on my hosted server, it fails. I can't do an upload to my current hosted server as this is disabled by the administrator, and I cannot get install from directory to work either. There are various postings on the web about Mambo install from directory not working properly, but no solutions to it as far as I can see.
So I went down a different tack and changed the Apache .htaccess file to intercept GETs for my static documents (my CV in this case, which I have stored under docs/cv.doc), and serve that up anyway, thereby bypassing Mambo. Seems to work OK.
I can then make that URL a Mambo menu item by creating a new menu item with type "Link - URL" and then pointing at the static doc. So there you go.

Sendmail on Linux

A few notes on Sendmail, since I don't know much about it, and the little bit that I do know, I don't want to forget. For next time.
It's in /etc/mail. Configure by updating sendmail.mc and then rerun "make -C /etc/mail" (assuming you've got sendmail-cf installed). The config is actually in sendmail.cf but you don't wanna have to understand it!! Don't forget to restart sendmail after you've updated the config!
Dodgy outbound msgs get dumped to /var/spool/mail/. Have a read of all the strange hieroglyphs of the sendmail, and rejoice that you don't have to try to understand it all in detail.
The thing I needed to do just now was to make sendmail send straight to our local SMTP server (actually MS Exchange). I updated the SMART_HOST parameter with an IP address - but that's not good enough. Oh no. It expects a hostname.
That's all I know about sendmail. Told you it wasn't much!