Joomla 1.5, Joomla 1.7, or Mambo 4.6 - Which one is best for me?

What started out as the Mambo content management system has spawned several forks and variations. The 2 main ones are Mambo and Joomla. The current version of Mambo is 4.6, and Joomla! is now on version 1.7 (although 1.5 will still be supported until April 2012). 

So which one should you choose? Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and it depends what you are trying to achieve. You can run any of the Mambo family of CMSs on your Netshine Hosting account, but we only offer Mambo 4.6, Joomla 1.5, or Joomla 1.7 pre-installed. Here is a quick summary of each to help you decide which one to use:

While the name has remained the same since the beginning of the project, the developers and project leaders have changed - most significantly when the entire development team walked out and started Joomla in 2005. Since then, Mambo has struggled in the popularity rankings, as the vast majority of the Mambo community followed the development team and started using Joomla. Still, Mambo is an excellent CMS, which continues to improve at a steady pace. Unlike Joomla, Mambo releases are fairly well spaced out, so you generally don't have to upgrade very often.

Advantages - A stable, mature product, fairly lightweight, so performs well on a busy site, with some nice core features. The project is generally well managed, and has a promising roadmap for future development. The Mambo Foundation's interpretation of the GPL (the license all of these products are released under) is sound and allows proprietary extensions to use the Mambo API, giving scope for better integration with other (non-GPL) systems and commercial extensions.

Disadvantages - The biggest disadvantage of Mambo is the lack of new extensions for it. Most developers who used to write extensions for Mambo switched over to Joomla, although a few have started supporting Mambo again now. Another disadvantage is the much smaller user community - which can make it a little more difficult to get support or find answers to your questions than with Joomla. The Mambo forums are still quite active though.

Mambo is especially suitable for: Small and Medium-sized businesses, and anyone who does not need a lot of extensions and does not want to upgrade very often. If you only want a fairly basic website which you can update easily, but without a lot of "web 2.0" interactive features, Mambo offers a sensible and reliable solution.

The second generation of Joomla has better support for multi-language use, and a few useful additions and improvements over 1.0, but most of the changes have been to the architecture - ostensibly to make it easier for 3rd party developers to create extensions for it. If you don't need legacy mode (necessary if you want to run some older extensions), and can run it on PHP5 (as you should be doing by now!), there could be some performance gains over Joomla 1.0.

Advantages - A large number of extensions are available. Some older extensions can still work if the legacy mode plugin is enabled. A huge user base and a huge and active community make it much easier to get help and find answers to problems in the Joomla forums.

Disadvantages - May run slowly if you use legacy mode. Reaches end of life in April 2012, after which Joomla 1.5 sites could remain open to security vulnerabilities.

Joomla 1.5 is especially suitable for: Anyone who already has a Joomla 1.5 website and does not yet want to go through the pain of upgrading.

Joomla 1.7 (and beyond)
The 3rd generation of Joomla finally addresses some niggling issues that have caused problems since the days of Mambo. Multi-level nested categories are now supported, and there is much more granular control available over which users can access which parts of your site. The API has been refined which should make it easier for extension developers and we can therefore expect rapid growth in the number of extensions available.

Advantages - Being the latest and greatest incarnation, this edition of Joomla is therefore also the most 'future proof' of the featured systems. There is more flexibility and control in the core product than previous versions, and all new extensions are being written for this version.

Disadvantages - With extra features comes extra complexity and if you want to make use of them, there will be a learning curve. There is no 'legacy mode' in this version, so extensions for older versions will not work. Upgrading from 1.5 can be problematic and requires the use of a 3rd party extension (JUpgrade).

Joomla 1.7 is especially suitable for: Anyone who is about to set up a new website. Of course it is only suitable if the extensions you need are available for Joomla 1.7, or if you can wait for the developer to release a compatible update. Most (but definitely not all) extensions written for Joomla 1.6 will also work in 1.7 and later.

Still not sure?

If you are still unsure which one to go for, we would recommend Joomla 1.7 as long as you check first that all of the extensions you are going to need (including templates) are compatible with it. Upgrading from 1.5 to 1.7 is not easy, but from 1.7 onwards it is much simpler.