Mambo has been dying a slow death since the split from Joomla. In fact, the last time I visited their site was when they were forking again!

Its sad to see a once-great project in such a state. Several links on the homepage are broken, only three users were in the forum compared to over 800 in the Joomla forums and the "Download Mambo" didn't work.

There are even paid links on their homepage. Scroll to the bottom of Mamboserver.com and you'll see "CYLON: Internet Marketing, Check out our Customers:" and underneath a list of links including "Phone Card | Used Cars | Geh?use Netzteil USB | Phone Cards | Business Web Hosting".

Even more shocking was that Siteground, whose antics we've covered here before, seem to have taken control of Mamboserver.com.

• Siteground dominate the homepage. I know they need financial support but 4 of the 7 frontpage stories are advertisements for Siteground. Theres also an ad for FilesFrom.com, completely unrelated to Joomla, but run by Peter Lamont, former project leader.
• Siteground dominate the hosting page. Spot the difference between the Mambo hosting page where Siteground (who sponsor the page) are ranked number one and the fake hosting review sites that Siteground puts up elsewhere.
• Siteground domainate the templates page. Although dozens of companies produce templates, only one is allowed to put templates on mamboserver .... "Mambo Template section is managed and hosted by SiteGround web hosting provider".
• Using Mamboserver for deep linking. Check the small menus throughout the site. On the templates page, theres a small menu called "Other Free Templates by SiteGround:" which provides links to Siteground's inside pages with beautiful anchor text: "phpNuke Themes", "Joomla Templates" etc. Its no wonder they rank #2 and #1 on Google for these terms.
• Siteground hosts all the Mambo sites. If you look carefully, you will find a disclaimer page mentioning this.

Mamboserver.com may technically be controlled by the Mambo Foundation, but in reality its serving the interests of just one company.

Update: Its been pointed out to me that in Mambo's annual report for 2007, donations totalled $8,483.57 and hosting costs were also exactly $8,483.57. Given that some webhosts will spend more than that every day on Adwords, it sounds like a pretty good deal for Siteground.