Overview:

Joomla is basically the new, competing version of Mambo. Several months ago the open source software development group split, with several of the original developers leaving Mambo to join the Joomla development system. As of now, Joomla and Mambo are very similar; in fact, almost identical. Most modules and components and templates that work with Mambo work almost perfectly with Joomla. Joomla works well for medium to larger websites and is one of the best content management systems out there. It competes against the best, thus it is one of the best.

Advantages:

If you have used Mambo in the past, an advantage of using Joomla now is that you will basically not have to learn anything. Because Mambo and Joomla are so similar, little learning is needed in the translation. For non-Mambo users, Joomla has the same advantages that Mambo has; modules, components, and user accounts, as well as many other things. With these features you can set up allowances and restrictions to your users; ultimately, this gives you a very strict amount of control over your website. If you set it up this way, everything works as you’d like, and nothing will happen or be published that you don’t approve.

Disadvantages:

One possible disadvantage of Joomla is that it will be so different than Mambo. In a few years, Mambo and Joomla will continue to evolve, and one or the other will turn out to be the dominate one. However, we cannot know which one that will be at this time, so you must weigh both the risk and the advantages. Another disadvantage of Joomla is that it can be hard to get the hang of if you are new to the Joomla-Mambo software. In addition to this, Joomla, like Mambo, can be difficult to learn how to work when you are just starting. It’s hard to get it to work right in the beginning, disable certain features, and to make a template you like.

Best Uses:

Like Mambo, Joomla is bested use with moderate to larger websites. It does fine for smaller ones, but it can be a hassle to set up. It takes a long time to get the hang of using the software and configuring it to exactly what you want. It can be effective for certain tasks,

Platform:

Joomla is run on web hosting with PHP and a MySQL database.

Templates and Modification:

There are a decent amount of pre-made Joomla templates one can use from a stock website or customize. In addition to this, virtually every Mambo template that is out there will work almost perfectly with Joomla.