The biggest Swedish computer magazine "Datormagazin" in its May issue brings a big article about Mambo. This is a short summary of the article. The biggest Swedish computer magazine "Datormagazin" (http://www.datormagazin.se) in its May issue (http://www.datormagazin.se/content/issue.jsp) brings a big article about Mambo.
It gives a guided tour through CMS world and Mambo in particular. The article is on 6 pages and includes several screenshots.

The article first says little about CMS history and various portal-like content management systems like PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, Xaraja, Xoops, E107, Typo3 etc.
Even blogg tools like WordPress and MovableType and project tools like Wiki are mentioned.
Mambo is, together with EzPublish, described more as a Content Management Framework suitable for traditional sites and expandable upon desires. With Mambo you get a system in the same division with the big boys, without paying a daim.

The author praises developers for Mambo's user friendliness and simplicity. He got a web newbie to get going with Mambo and he says it only took 2 hours for him to learn how to create categories and publish his first content.
He writes that the developers put much thought in not using the technical terms where it's not necessary and the most functions are easy to found. An exception, according to him, is the settings for the frontpage that would be more suitable for a more noticeable place than in the main menu. Despite the simplicity the system does not miss the possibilities for advanced settings. But good thing is that these settings are not something that the first time user has to worry about.

The idea of including only minimal functionality in core and install additional addons seems to really appeal on him. The addon installation process is described as the real power of Mambo. Even simplicity of making own components and templates is a plus.

Mambo's core is described as very quick. Gayle's slashdotting test is explained in detail and the author notes that today's version of Mambo has even better performance since the cache is built in. Another positive thing is the security aspect. He says that Mambo did not have any security problem since 2003 except 3 smaller exploits that have been quickly patched.

There are few Mambo weaknesses that author notes. The first is the absence of more advanced access control management. He notes that this is on the roadmap for version 5.0 but until then the ACL can be manually hacked since it's following a given standard.
Another weakness according to him is the absence of a unified code standard. It is noticeable that Mambo consists of a few different generations of code from different developers, but this has been improved lately.
A worse problem is HTML code embedded in the logic. It's been impossible for him to create a tableless output without serious hacking. He hopes that this would be fixed in the version 5.0. Until then he is afraid that we are all stuck in a design that smells 90-ties.

Installation of Mambo is described as very easy and convenient as well as the installation of addons. The author tries to explain difference between components and modules, but this is something that, unfortunately, he did not understand quite well either so his explanation is somewhat misleading.

The author writes about Mambo as very strong competitor in CMS world. He tested many different CMS's including Post- and PHP-Nuke, E107, Drupal, Geeklog, Textpattern, Nucleus, PhpX, Xoops, Exoops, Envolution etc. Together with PostNuke, Mambo is the only CMS that he stacks with. While he experience the other CMS's to go towards complexity and more weight, Mambo goes to be more simple and understandable despite the more power it gets. The Porsche Brasil site and the Linux User & Developer Award are mentioned as examples of Mambo's success.

He recommends Mambo to readers and lists many links with Mambo resources, among which my own (with my name misspelled, of course) and Phil's site.

\Emir