The main reason I am playing with PHP5 on OSX is trying to switch to Mambo for my portal project. There are a few reasons for this consideration.
- I found I am doing everything from scratch, like user/group management, session, login, logout, layout, template. It is rebuilding wheel.
- What in my mind for my portal project is a generic portal framework plus few bioinformatics-cluster modules.
- We do not have strong development, especially in arts, templates etc.
- Mambo is a very good CMS (framework + modules) and wins Linux design 2004. and it is GPL.
- Mambo is free, but our modules are NOT.
- Mambo is well maintained, with over 300 templates and very comprehensive documents on module development.
The only unfortunate thing is “Mambo is written in PHP“. Although I had some experience with PHP in 2001 with my NUS search engine project, I am not expert at. It will take me 2-3 week to learn it. But I am sure some backend program could work in PERL and communicate with web-portal via database.
By using Mambo, I may save a lot of time for art design and web template. In fact, more than 50% of my time was spent on colors, position, browser compatiblity etc.
My biocluster portal from the end is a web-based bioinformatics cluster solution. So it does not need to be PERL based. I will spend 1-2 week to evaluate Mambo and see if it is possible to quicky get my first module work.