Review: Mambo Content Management System for the Church Website

This is my first review for a service/product that churches can use for their website. I have put ease of use, price, and design freedom as this week’s grading scale and will probably do so for most CMS (Content Management Systems). This week I am reviewing the Mambo CMS, because I have just recently played with it on a website that I work on.
What is Mambo, you may ask? In simple and quick terms, it is an internet version of windows for your website. A CMS makes it easy for you to build and store a complex website just like windows makes it easy for you to navigate your computer. It is all drag and drop, folder click, and option chooser. The user does not need to know any foreign internet language to work on it, which is a good thing for busy pastors and laymen who have enough on their plate.
Ease of Use 2 Stars The point of a CMS is to make building websites easy and doable for everyone. It is critical that it is simple. This is the worst part of Mambo, in my opinion. Right from downloading I became confused and frustrated. There is one site and many different files to choose from. There wasn’t one link that jumped out and said, “pick me, I am the complete package”. Yet I am a stubborn mule and continued to try it out. Once I got it uploaded and onto my site, I wanted to make some pages. This is where the real mess came in. There were categories, items, and menus but no simple create a page. It was an entirely complex system that was adding resentment against this software. About the time I figured out how to manage Mambo, I could’ve written an entire site with notepad. On the other hand, if someone does an anxiety against coding then Mambo is your answer. I was able to make a good website without looking at one sight of code.

Price 5 Stars
If you have not heard about Open Source yet, I highly advise you to do this. It is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Since Mambo is open-source it is entirely free. There is no hidden cost. I personally try to stay away from anything that isn’t open source, because I love the philosophy of it. On the other hand, just because it is free doesn’t make it the right choice. Mambo is not a finished product and has many gaping holes that you would not find in boxed CMS for $300. The choice is ultimately only the buyer’s to make: go for the free CMS or the costly one that comes with an instruction manual…

Freedom 2 ½ Stars
One of the most important needs of a good church website is the freedom to change and mold as paper in the wind. For me the most troublesome part of Mambo was this freedom issue. Unless you know code, it is extremely difficult to change the design and layout of the site to what you would like. Just the right skin must be searched for and downloaded from the web, and even then it will probably not look exactly right. This loss of freedom is true for any CMS. In order to not have to worry about pesky internet language, something must be given up.
Overall 3 ½ Stars In the end, I think Mambo is extremely useful for a certain crowd. If you have an already existing website for your church or any knowledge of HTML, I suggest that you think about a different route. On the other hand, if you need a site that is easy to put up, easy to maintain, and easy to show then Mambo might be right for you. A couple of years ago, the possibilities of creating a website without any coding knowledge was impossible. Thanks now to Mambo and other Content Management Systems, anyone with a vision and dream can claim a part of the Internet frontier.