Joomla began life as Mambo and morphed into Joomla in September 2005 at which time the version numbering for Joomla was started at 1.0. Consequently you may see occassional references in this document to Mambo versions which are direct ancestors of Joomla. In general, versions of Mambo prior to 4.5 are of historical interest only and are not documented here. Mambo 4.5.2.3 was directly followed by Joomla 1.0.

Right up to the release of the 4.x versions of Mambo, writing components, modules and templates was a fairly convoluted affair. Files in scattered directories made it difficult to actually package an individual element; code was not organised into reusable API calls; it was generally hard work. The number of third-party add-ons around the time of the release of Mambo 4.0.x was testimony to this. There were maybe a half dozen templates and not many more components and modules.

The development of Mambo 4.5 sought to change all that. Code was modularised, files were reorganised, and an installer made it much easier. Today we have literally hundreds of templates, and dozens of components, modules, and mambots. Amazingly, most of the developers of these add-ons have picked it up by trial and error and following the example of the main code base. To date, there has not been a great deal of quality developer documentation. The community spirit has had to come to the aid of many a fledgling developer crying "Help! How do I do this".

Since the release of Mambo 4.5.1, we realised that quality documentation for both users and developers is of paramount importance. We have worked hard to create documentation in both these areas.

This manual, while not yet complete, seeks to give you an insight into the workings of Joomla.

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