Martin Brampton, former Mambo development lead, created Aliro as a ground-up architectural rethink of the Mambo/Joomla codebase. It introduced role-based access control and sophisticated caching but never gained critical mass. It absorbed MiaCMS in 2009 and eventually faded away.
Martin Brampton, former Mambo development lead, created Aliro as a ground-up architectural rethink of the Mambo/Joomla codebase. It introduced role-based access control and sophisticated caching but never gained critical mass. It absorbed MiaCMS in 2009 and eventually faded away.
Martin Brampton wasn't just any Mambo developer -- he led the Mambo development team during a critical period. After the Joomla split and the ongoing decline of Mambo, Brampton concluded that the entire Mambo/Joomla architecture needed fundamental rethinking, not just incremental patches. Around 2008, he launched Aliro with a focus on modern PHP5 practices, proper role-based access control (RBAC), and a flexible object caching system.
Brampton even wrote a book about the project: "PHP 5 CMS Framework Development" (Packt Publishing), which went to a second edition. The book documented his architectural decisions and served as both documentation and manifesto. In July 2009, the MiaCMS team merged into Aliro, bringing additional developers and validation to the project.
Despite its technical ambitions and Brampton's deep CMS expertise, Aliro never achieved the escape velocity needed to build a sustainable community. The CMS market was consolidating around WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, and there simply wasn't room for another PHP CMS, no matter how well-architected. The code lives on in a git repository as a testament to what might have been.
Aliro project launched by Martin Brampton
PHP 5 CMS Framework Development book published
MiaCMS merges into Aliro
Development activity effectively ceases
Negligible in adoption, but intellectually influential. Brampton identified architectural problems (poor access control, no proper caching) that Joomla would struggle with for years afterward.