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6 Apr 2007 Mambo CMS review

[Review] Mambo is the biggest pile of shit I have ever come across. It is difficult to use, even harder to work with, incredibly rigid, not standard compliant, the list goes on. It angers my blood! It's made my life a little less enjoyable to live. It ruined my last relationship with my ex-girlfriend1! I wish I never met Mambo version 4.53.

GRAX RATING: 0/5

I suppose you'll be wanting a bit more than the summary. Let me explain.

Mambo is an open-source CMS that allows people to easily manage any part of their website without in-depth knowledge of web programming skills. The idea is you install all the necessary files and database on your server, then using the admin system you populate the site with content, choose a layout and you're done. It's suppose to be quick and simple.

This sounded very appealing because it would be great to give to clients who wanted to change every aspect of their website but are not IT literate. One of the advantages is that it is completely free to use due to some open-source rules, so people can modify any part of the Mambo system to work any way they wish. Indeed there are many plug-in modules made by the community to do many different and wonderfully usefully things.

The version I tested out was version 4.53 because it was recommended to be the most stable, even more stable than the latest version that was released (something like 4.62).

Let me list all the things wrong with Mambo, in no particular order...

Not W3C Standards Compliant
Mambo does not follow these standards. Run the validation test and see the huge list of errors that follows.

Uses TABLE tags for web layout
There is virtually no use of CSS to generate it's layout. You're practically stuck with the layout format you're given. Not given much room to flex those creative muscles. And I'm sure many web programmers out there will understand how much of a pain in the ass it is to try and modify anything in tables.

It's HUGE
You have to install hundreds upon hundreds of files on your server to use Mambo, not to mention the database filled with a couple dozen tables with a few hundred plus records. Websites are meant to be small and streamline, not a huge lummox. The end result; a website that runs very slowly even with a broadband connect. Which also leads to the next point...

It's a nightmare to debug
I kid you not; there is thousands upon thousands of lines of code. PHP classes and functions from one file that call functions from a different class from a different file in a different directory. You'll be spending a good couple of hours searching in this labyrinth trying to figure out how one of the Mambo pages worth. Before you even try to tackle the bug you're fixing.

Some of the files are practically empty and seem to serve no useful purpose
'nuff said.

Poor use of JavaScript
I'll ignore the fact that it has embedded JavaScript code within the web pages for now, the biggest sin that Mambo commits is using JavaScript to actually make some parts of the website functional. Namely on one part of the Mambo website it used JavaScript to act like a hyperlink... rather than using the actual Anchor tag as a hyper link... So if you have no JavaScript enabled you're kinda stuck.

Admin - Mambo is NOT very intuitive
To create a new page in its own menu category one has to create the new category area, then has to create the static page, then has to link the page to the right menu, then has to make sure the menu is linked ot the right module. I'm IT literate and it took me a while to get use to this pattern.

Admin - Cannot copy and paste bulk text from MS Word into the admin area unless it's IE
So if you're trying to create a new page in any other browser (apart from IE) and you wish to copy and paste a lot of text from a Word document to the text area, it pops up with an message saying "No no no , you can't do that bub. That would be too easy." and then ignores you. How effing random and annoying is that??

The Admin navigation intially broke in IE7
This has been recently fix

It make me groan with dread every time the subject of Mambo comes up in conversation...

Mambo is the biggest pile of shit I have ever come across. It is difficult to use, even harder to work with, incredibly rigid, not standard compliant, the list goes on. It angers my blood! It's made my life a little less enjoyable to live. It ruined my last relationship with my ex-girlfriend1! I wish I never met Mambo version 4.53.

GRAX RATING: 0/5


1 - Not really. But it might as well have, it's so bad.

Posted at: 14:05 PM

Your Thoughts

Tony said on Saturday 14th of April 2007 at 09:06:57 PM

Gravatar I hate Mambo too.

Mambo raped my mother and murdered my dog. Probably.

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