[week 52] Your personal Mambo year 2004

[Admin]

Hi everybody,

the Mambo year 2004 comes to an end. Christmas is near and it's time to reach out the hand to your fellow Mambers. We all had our up's and down's this year with Mambo, with the community and with other things like the Connolly affair.

It's time to tell others your personal view on the Mambo year 2004. What did you like the most? What was the worst day with Mambo? Which releases did you like the most? And which not? Which people in the community would you like to thank?

Many questions and I am happy to see your Mambo year...

[iwyen]

Hi all,

I learnt about Mambo sometime in April this year and explored it for quite a while before I finally built a serious Mambo site. It was a tough decision cos' suddenly came a 4.5.1 beta . I was pretty comfortable with 4.5.0 but also quite sure 4.5.1 could deliver what I wanted better. I was eager to complete the site during my school vacation but 4.5.1 wasn't stable then and many components/modules were not compatible then and so I chose to stick with 4.5.0. I guess that's not a bad decision afterall, cos' working with 4.5.0 did help me work more comfortably with 4.5.1.

The community was a great help so here goes a big THANK YOU!!!

But frankly speaking, I wasn't too concerned about those commotions that happened now and then cos' I neither gain nor lose ($) from them and I was too busy fixing my site anyway. IMHO, those commotions built on profit and loss so, I still love free open source products Weirdly, there are people who actually demanded service for free products?!!! When components like RSGallery and PUArcade stopped development, I was apalled by some rude reactions. Developers are just like a friend. No matter how important they are to you, they have to leave you one day. Ain't appreciating their hard work and wishing them well a better act? Someone else will take over and you get a new friend, or so I believe

[manuman]

I had two big Mambo moments in 2004.

1. Finally ditched postnuke in favour of Mambo, this was after watching Mambo from a distance for 6 months.

2. I actually got out the Calculater to workout the Mamber countdown... to live. Incidentally I either messed with the calculator or you were a little late

I big thank you to Arthur... Mambers and Mamboportal are a huge benefit to Mambo.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all.

[mambomango]

I too was new to mambo this year. I relaunched my site for writers at http://www.birminghamwords.co.uk using mambo after getting frustrated with a hand-coded html site with tens of little php scripts added in, none of which would talk to each other. Mambo fitted the bill admirably. Being new to php and all that stuff, it's been a steep learning curve, but I've enjoyed almost every step.

When I started out I was just interested in my writers' site, and not much else, but mambo is pretty addictive. And now I find myself doing a couple of jobs for other people - currently designing a site on British wildlife clip art for a friend, and doing my first commercial job early in January 2005. None of this was expected. I'm also inching towards issuing a couple of templates for 4.5.1... Again some time in the new year.

What has impressed me continuously is the helpfulness of the community. Both here and at the mamboserver forums there are very few of the 'This question has already been asked, you damn fool' responses that I've seen elsewhere. And there have been countless people who have gone out of their way to lend a hand when I've found myself baffled. It is a superb community, despite the occasional disputes and other wrinkles (which serve to remind us not to be complacent...)

Without getting all Gwynneth Paltrow, I would like to thank Arthur for mambers and mamboportal, as well as everyone who has answered every single one of my dumb questions, the development team, of course, my cat, my dog, my pet budgie, Miss. Simpkins my primary school teacher, my parents, my great-great-great uncle Wilf who was tragically mauled by jackals in the Hindu Kush...

Happy christmas to everyone.

Will / Mambomango

[X-F4CT0R]

I think it was a very successfull Mambo year. A lot has been done and a lot has been learned. A big part of that have been Arthur's efforts to build and extend the mambo world and to invite new mambers so to say.

The threats concerned me there for little while because I have been called regularly to speak with Connolly but I think mambo can not be beaten with just such threats.

I would also love to thank Greg from allmambo.com who has taught me quite this year.

Idigital (Damian Caynes) who was a trouble maker here a few months ago has been honored "in my opinion" as one of the better mambo coders/hackers as you can see what he has done with reviewgamer.com

Thank you very much, merry christmas and a happy new year

[deZORO]

Mr. Admin

thanks foe job


for all mambo dev and all mambo people



Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all.

[ChipMonk]

I started using mambo just after my 32nd birthday last month. before Mambo, i was like lost in the middle of no where. eZone3000 was getting big, and i was really tired of updating it manually (as it was 100% static, and made in MSFP).

I came across with PHPOpenNuke and PHPNuke, but luckily realized its like opening everything in front of everyone.

i searched Best CMS (free) based on PHP MySQL and first thing i got was Mamboserver.com

Though, shall give this junk a try as well. Till then i had used all Nukes and a couple of weired CMSs as well.

In start, i was about to remove it, but then realized BACKEND is heavenly powerful. but it took two weeks for me to realize how tough is to manage it, but i love holding tough horses. So bingo, my head was fixed on Mambo.

then i noticed i dont have to take my *** out in fire, mambers is there to help. and now i am helping (atleast trying to help) others according to best of my knoweldege and abilities.

I am not a programmer, and / or DB guy, i m simple IT consultant, and senior network admin in an ISP. Mambers helped me out a lot!

Point to be noted, u dont need to look for U-turn while using mambo! its simply the best! (as HBO is)

So next year will be the greater one, with mambo, as last two months were great

[alterego]

For me, Mambo2004 was the year I first discovered it, so I have no previous years to compare it with. Had I not purchased a new server in January, which came with a Fantastico license, I might never have discovered Mambo, since I was already invested in a java+perl-based commercial CMS.

I'll turn 50 in 2005, and as a long-time host provider I think I've finally found a product that will not only scale well, but still be appreciated and enjoyable to work with 5 years from now. Thanks to all in the community that make Mambo such a pleasure to work with and use every day.

Best things about Mambo are 1: fast and light code; 2: professional quality look and feel; and 3: support, support, support from a community with an incredibly diverse range of skills and talents. Otherwise, I can't imagine have a single CMS that can handle everything from a homeschool support community to a large church site to a medium sized commercial construction company and dozens of other kinds of sites in between.

[oracledarren]

Hi all,

I first came across Mambo over a year ago now, but did not really consider doing any development work with it until June of this Year. Prior to mambo I had quite a succesful pre modified version of phpbb going which I finally decided to stop and look for another way forward.

The reasons for stopping the phpbb was for a smaller issue of that generated by Connelly and can on dispise people like that for trying to make the wider on going community development more and more commercially biased and that of self gain.

So I turned to mambo once again in June and put together a first go at a pre-installed version which has proved to be a good idea.

Since that time, me and my growing team have started to migrate into the intecracies of mambo and continue developement as we once did with phpbb.

This has started more recently with a determined effort in helping the community grow with to good will that is deserved.

So to round off, Mambo has certainly brought us at Parkweb a new fresh way forward in terms of developement and design and we (as all we do) hope to see more and more people joining in and offering what they are good at. Remember simple things like spreading the word, making comments in forums like Arthurs all at to the Mambo experience.

Anyways enough from me, so we at Parkweb would like to wish happy holidays and an excellent new year to every person in the Mambo world, new and old.

[SensaiLee]

Meanwhile I'm with Mambo for quite a while. When I started playing around with Mambo it was short before the first 4.5 stable release. Since then many things have strongly improved and the developement team did a great job. Also the community is great and you'll always get a helping hand if you're lost within your code.

The only thing I was a little unhappy with was the upgrading from 4.5 to 4.5.1/4.5.1a because I often thought "This really sucks"...I'm afraid that upcoming versions could also make me cry out loudly and sware 'cause the system won't do as I'd like anymore......this was also the only time when I really needed my backups :o)

So then, I wish you a merry christmas and a good time with mambo in 2005!

greetz.