Hi, I wanted to ask, if there are any strategies to make XOOPS more admin-friendly ?
why mambo is so popular (they said they have 5million users - though probably not all of them are admins )

Because first steps are as easy and comfortable as possible.
to my mind XOOPS
* installation is also OK
* configuration is kind of boring - setting it for the first time took me 1 or 2 hours.
* administration is a bit confusing - (for example) You make block visible and think its ok, but quite often I forget o assign right group permisions. why? because - those permisions are on the other panel. - I'd propose to combine blocks and grousp in some more comfortable way.
* changin design - is quite tedious (probably thats why we dont have so big versatility as mambo),
- first You have to study CSS ( I think it would be enough to have side_blocks (instead of right, left), and center_blocks (instead of cr, cc, cl) groups )
- then layouts: browsing to the right template takes some time - and if I need to edit in several places, and then check out, and then edit again.. (tabbed browsing helps, but still); and preview is not very useful, as it shows just independent blocks correctly.
* dynamic drop-down menu (don't you think it's comfortable?) Though but this is quite esasy to find/make yourself..