Mambo is a full-featured, award-winning content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. It is used all over the world to power government portals, corporate intranets and extranets, ecommerce sites, nonprofit outreach, schools, church, and community sites. Mambo's "power in simplicity" also makes it the CMS of choice for many small businesses and personal sites.

Mambo is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet and with almost 8 million downloads, Mambo is arguably one of the most popular CMS's in the world. Mambo is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

If you've read anything at all about content management systems (CMS), you'll probably know at least three things: Content Management Systems are the most exciting way to do business, Content Management Systems can be really, I mean really, complicated and lastly Content Management Systems are absolutely, outrageously, often unaffordably expensive.

Over the past eight years Mambo has changed all that ... Mambo is different from the normal models for CMS software. For a start, it's not complicated. Mambo has been developed for the masses. It's licensed under the GNU/GPL license, is free, easy to install and administer, and reliable.

Here is an overview of just some of the features included in Mambo:

• Completely database driven site engine;
• Internationalisation (UTF-8);
• Localisation (interface translation);
• Page caching mechanism to improve performance on busy sites;
• Advertising management (banners, etc);
• News, products or services sections fully editable and manageable;
• Topics sections can be added to by contributing authors;
• Media (images, documents) upload and management.;
• Content publication scheduling;
• Content syndication (RSS);
• Search engine friendly (SEF) URL's;
• Dynamic Forum/Poll/Voting booth for on-the-spot results;
• Fully customisable layouts;
• Simple but powerful template system (no complex templating syntax to learn);
• Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX server, Solaris and AIX

Extensive Administration:

• Friendly Admin interface with point and click functionality;
• Hierarchical user access groups;
• Object hierarchy - as many sections, departments, divisions and pages as you want;
• Archive manager. Put your old articles into cold storage rather than throw them out
• Multiple WYSIWYG content editor support;
• Content macro language (aka mambots);
• Advanced package/add-on/template deployment system.

New features and improvements are being added all the time. Mambo development is collaborative. Working with the community to identify areas of improvement and additional functionality that is needed in this fast-paced world of the Internet, Mambo retains its position as one of the leading open source content management systems in the world.

Overview of Mambo

First and foremost, Mambo is a Content Management System (CMS). It is the engine behind your website that simplifies the creation, management, and sharing of content.

There is an excellent article on How to evaluate a Content Management System (written by James Robertson) that covers the features of a good content management system in great detail.

The goal of the Mambo project is to meet most of the requirements highlighted in the above article. As each day in development goes by we are getting nearer and nearer, while at the same time building a solid core which can be extended by third party developers.

In the hands of a custom developer, this makes Mambo a powerful platform for a wide variety of Internet applications that go far above and beyond the simple creation of content.

What Mambo isn't! Mambo is not a typical "portal" solution.

While Mambo can be modified or extended to provide this style of site this is not the goal of the project. Mambo is aimed at the more squarely at corporate websites or sites for small to medium businesses, families or personal sites.

The Mambo Team focuses on building a solid application framework rather than on add-ons that are typically found in many portal solutions. This keeps the Mambo core extremely lightweight and efficient, thus making it easier for anybody to extend Mambo through custom third party component and modules that directly serve their needs.

Brief History of Mambo

Mambo has gone through an evolution, from a proprietary product engineered by Miro programmers in 2000, to a release to the Open Source community under the GNU General Public License in April 2001, to a mature product under the protection of a non-profit Foundation. The path is not unlike that followed by other respected Open Source programs which have grown from small beginnings to industry leadership roles. We are proud of that heritage and of the work that all the people have put into making that happen. Mambo is the result of more than seven years of work by a large number of people. It is not the sole province of any one company or any one group of developers. It is the product of the efforts of many people working together towards a common goal over time.

Mambo today faces a number of challenges, the greatest of which involve the steps needed to re-shape the organisation as a Foundation-driven Open Source project. In the past Mambo has been largely reliant on two groups: The ad hoc community which provided much of the energy, manpower, and talent, and Mambo’s primary corporate partner at that time, Miro International Pty Ltd.

Reliance on an ad hoc community has served many projects in good stead, but that path also has limitations. Typically the crisis point for ad hoc community-driven projects is reached either as a result of internal pressures, like extreme growth, or from outside pressures, such as threats to the existence of the project. In Mambo’s case it was a combination of factors which lead to the conclusion that the program’s future stability and growth required a shift to a more formal Foundation-driven structure.

In late 2003, Mambo was targeted by legal threats concerning the intellectual property rights to certain pieces of code contained in the core. The problem was severe and cost money, man hours, and eventually the loss of some key community leaders. Miro International Pty Ltd came to the aid of Mambo, offering legal and corporate resources to protect the development team and preserve the program. Without Miro’s willingness to bear a significant portion of the burden, Mambo, not to mention the many volunteers who were giving their time to the project, would have suffered further.

The idea of moving Mambo into the protection of a dedicated non-profit structure was born out of that incident in 2003 and was compelled by the rapid growth of the program’s complexity, the community, and the installed user base. Both Miro and community leaders backed the creation of a Foundation to shelter the project, though opinions differed sharply about how it was initially formed.

The Mambo Foundation was formed in August of 2005 and today exists for the benefit of Mambo and the community. It is independent and it is absolutely committed to Mambo as an open source project. The Foundation is non profit, open and accountable, and controlled solely by the members. (The Foundation is modelled primarily on Eclipse and GNOME, and is governed by its members via traditional voting and referendum rights.)

The Mambo Foundation takes Mambo forwards into the future, as it becomes less dependent on the patronage of a single corporate supporter and less subject to the whims of individual interest groups who may seek to use the community for their personal agendas. The Foundation is the custodian of Mambo's future, and it is what the members make of it.

Power in Simplicity!

It is used all over the world to power government portals, corporate intranets and extranets, ecommerce sites, nonprofit outreach, schools, church, and community sites. Mambo's "power in simplicity" also makes it the CMS of choice for many small businesses and personal sites.

Powerful enough for the most demanding internet or intranet site, simple enough for everyone to use!

Simple

Intuitive, user-friendly web-based interface.

Easy to install

Supports Linux, Windows IIS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD. The web-based installer gets you up and running within minutes. No complex set-up procedures. Also available on shared hosting servers via Fantastico.

Unparalleled Flexibility

Hundreds of extensions, plugins and add-on products are available for Mambo. These include forums, image and multimedia galleries, ecommerce & shopping carts, customer relationship managers, templates for theming your site, document management tools, and many, many more.

Save time, Save Money!

Once Mambo is set up, it is simple for non-technical users to create and update content through an intuitive, web browser-based editor. Mambo has been designed to facilitate increased productivity that will allow you to reap the benefits of increased control, efficiency, and content value.

Active Community

Skilled development team and a strong, active worldwide community.

Multiple Languages

Fully localised with language management that enables your message and your brand to reach a global marketplace. Downloadable language packs to get you up and running in your language of choice.

Mature

8 years old with over 7 million downloads, Mambo is used on sites all over the world to power anything from personal web sites to corporate intranets and extranets.

Customisable

Mambo is written in the PHP programming language, the world's most popular programming language for web-based applications. The flexibility of the code and inbuilt ability to extend Mambo make it one of the most powerful content managment systems available today.

Open Source

Mambo is free software, licensed under the same GNU General Public License as Linux and other popular Open Source software. Mambo uses Version 2 of the GNU/GPL which means that you are free to use Mambo and/or modify it, under the terms of the license.