Software update: Mambo 4.5.3

Mambo is a dynamic system written in PHP that allows the user to manage, organize and publish content. It contains many features that can be found in content management systems, blogs, collaboration sites and forums. The developers have been busy chasing away existing bugs and have released version 4.5.3 as a result. The included announcement looks like this:

Team Mambo is pleased to announce the arrival of version 4.5.3 of the Mambo Open Source Content Management System.

Version 4.5.3 is technically a maintenance release – an interim step between major releases – however the Team chose to define ‘maintenance’ rather broadly and took this opportunity to clean up a number of open issues. The release includes traditional maintenance items like bug fixes and security enhancements, but also goes further to address issues of concern to the community, like the long-standing need for flexible, compliant templates and the desire for an option that presents users with a simpler admin interface. The Team also spent some time standardizing areas in which there had been drift, from typos in language files, to unused controls and inconsistent data labels in the administration system.

Ric Shreves of Team Mambo referred to it as “a housecleaning,” saying “we sought with this release to get our house in order; to lay the ground work for some of the new initiatives we committed to in our position paper on the Future of Mambo. We also thought it important to put our own stamp on Mambo and to show the community that there is a capable new team that is able to work together and get things done.”

Of concern to all users are the improvements in system integrity. Recent exploits circulating on the Internet have taken advantage of issues relating to the Register Globals configuration on many servers. The new release of Mambo provides a fix to the current exploit, as well as a general hardening of the installation against known vulnerabilities. “No system is immune from attacks premised on the underlying infrastructure,” noted Core Dev Team Leader Martin Brampton “what we have sought to do is harden Mambo against direct attacks and lessons Mambo’s susceptibility to collateral damage from attacks aimed at servers, php and MySQL . Moving forward we will be continuing a program of hardening Mambo without waiting for destructive incidents.”

As a result of the large number of bug fixes and security enhancements, all current users of Mambo are encouraged to upgrade to 4.5.3. Compatibility problems are not anticipated, but the wide variety of configurations and coding standards employed by various programmers always means there is a possibility, however slim, that issues may arise.

What’s New in 4.5.3?

• Simple/Advanced Admin Interface Option
• New default template — CSS-driven, W3C Compliant, in 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600 versions
• Revised sample data designed to help new users understand the system and get up and running faster
• New help screens have been added and the help system has been expanded to help decrease inaccuracies in the delivery of help content.
• Over 100 bugs and anomalies addressed
• OSI certification