In recent years Mambo has gained widespread popularity across the globe. That’s because Mambo (and its close cousin, Joomla) comes equipped with capabilities that equal or exceed those found in many proprietary content management systems, some costing as much as a small ransom. For this reason, among many others, Hagen Graf’s Building Websites with Mambo: A step by step tutorial is a welcome addition to my expanding library of open source technology books.

My five-year stint as development manager for two separate proprietary CMS projects gave me a bit of a leg up when I began evaluating open source CMS packages earlier this year. Even so, I must admit my surprise to discover such a wide variety of free CMS applications, ranging in quality from dismal to near-excellent. After countless (often frustrating) hours of testing, Mambo emerged as the clear winner for the kind of general purpose CMS I sought. Not only did Mambo seem to consistently work “as advertised” (unlike so many others), it appeared to enjoy the most prolific base of developers, testers and users.

“Brilliant,” I mused. “Now to march down to Powell’s Technical Bookstore (Portland, Oregon’s “temple of the geeks”), pick up a Mambo manual, and make myself a ‘Mambo Master.’” Right. Blank stares greeted me as I queried Powell’s employees as to which Mambo CMS book they could honestly recommend. One of them kindly consulted the store’s database to discover that, indeed, a Mambo Open Source (MOS) guide did exist. And you’ll read it in German, thank you. “Wunderbar,” I moaned. Even though I’d lived in Germany for three years, the rigors of youthful sloth prevented me from learning German well enough to actually read it. Yet another little regret to add to my growing pile of psychic afflictions.

I quickly discovered that, although countless guides explain the workings of general-purpose free/open source software (FOSS), such as Linux, more specialized software--blogs, wikis, other CMS applications and so on--often required devotees to scrounge around the Internet for help. Yet curling up with a good software manual is sometimes just what the “doctor prescribes” in order to reach the next level of expertise with a particular technology. For precisely this reason I was overjoyed to discover the availability of Hagen Graf’s book. Written in English, no less!

Building Websites with Mambo bills itself as “a fast paced tutorial” for developing a Mambo-equipped website, and it certainly is that. Written for “web developers, designers, webmasters, content editors and marketing professionals,” Building Websites with Mambo covers a lot of turf with an easy-to-read, useful and pragmatic narrative. At times I wished for more detailed help with some of the administration functions. (I found Netshine Software’s Mambo Tutorial - Quick Start Guide, available as a downloadable PDF, a more useful guide for managing sections, categories and content items, for instance.) Overall, Graf’s tutorial helped me with much I previously had only hazy familiarity with. For instance I found the segments covering mass mail, news feeds, polls and contact categories alone worth the book’s asking price.

Overall I highly recommend Building Websites with Mambo: A step by step tutorial. Particularly if you’re a web designer/developer who has yet to experience the joy of equipping a website with a full-featured content management system, and turning static “brochureware” into a dynamic infohub. These days no business or organization has any excuse for failing to deploy a dynamic, content-rich website. Especially with such a powerful CMS like Mambo/Joomla freely available to all. And now folks who read in English have Building Websites with Mambo available as an excellent resource to help us get the most from Mambo Open Source.

David J. Myers directs Open Media Center, a grassroots media activist organization in Portland, Oregon. Dave earns a living running EvolvNet Consulting, an open source software consultancy also located in Portland.