as a Joomla Hebrew Core Team & a Joomla.org Q&T member - I should recommend it... but I don't think that Joomla is a all-in-one solution, although almost everything can be add or built to it. I think you should consider each site to its own story, & choose the most suitable CMS to satisfy its needs. Joomla is indeed the former Mambo, but they are seperated for almost 2 years. Joomla does have backward support, because its the same base code & API. I think you should leave Mambo out of the equation. My recommendation is to stick with Joomla for the light sites (personal/company sites, etc) Joomla has a User-Permission (ACL) vey limited which extending is just too painfull, but you can still have you-own editorial site. Use Drupal as your developing capable CMS - if you catch Drupal's idea you'll find it very intuitive to extend, although requires a lot of job (therefore not recommended for small sites) last but not least - have fun if you find ourself struggling to built/convert each site - than you are on the wrong way...