Maneno was a blogging application powered by

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

, Smarty, and

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

with content management capabilities. Initially released in October, 2008, it focused on creating a multi-theme, multi-author, multi-lingual system that works in a hosted settin

The name Maneno means 'words' in swahili language, Swahili and the site focused on having low latency/filesize options to make it fast to load on low

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

connection

Additionally, it had an architecture that allowed for heavy customization by end users. The core of the system was envisioned after a trip to the

Democratic Republic of Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

in 2008 by two of the founders. They realized that while trying to write articles from the country via

VSAT A very-small-aperture terminal (VSAT) is a two-way satellite ground station with a dish antenna that is smaller than 3.8 meters. The majority of VSAT antennas range from 75 cm to 1.2 m. Bit rates, in most cases, range from 4 kbit/s up to 16 ...

connections, the connection speeds proved incredibly slow and discouraging for not only them, but anyone striving to pursue

citizen journalism Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...

endeavor

Additionally it was shown that the language spheres of Africa had nearly no crossover between one another. Taking these issues into account and coming to the conclusion that no current blogging system adequately addressed them, this entirely new platform for blogging was created to serve the African blogging community. Maneno was available in Bambara language, Bambara,

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

, French,

Fula Fula may refer to: *Fula people (or Fulani, Fulɓe) * Fula language (or Pulaar, Fulfulde, Fulani) **The Fula variety known as the Pulaar language **The Fula variety known as the Pular language **The Fula variety known as Maasina Fulfulde *Al-Fula ...

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language official in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa * Swahili culture Swahili culture is the culture of ...

Lingala Lingala (Ngala) (Lingala: ''Lingála'') is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Port ...

, and Zulu. The available languages covered all of the lingua franca languages of Africa as well as a selection of large local African languages that were gradually added to. The site worked in allowing a user to be able to view and interact with the site in any one of the languages available for the interface as well as being able to translate articles and sections of the site via a

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...

metho

In August 2010, Maneno announced that would be scaling back their extensive social media outreach initiatives to focus on developing the core technology of the sit

and as of 2014, the site is now inactive. The Board of Directors were a group of bloggers and technology enthusiasts working to expand the platform and reach out to new bloggers. Members were: Rebecca Wanjik

Elia Varela Serra, Saul Wainright, and

Miquel Hudin Miquel Hudin is an Americans, American-Croatians, Croatian writer based in Catalonia, Spain. He created a series of wine travel books called, Vinologue in 2008. He additionally writes for his website, Hudin.com since its launch in 2011. Biograph ...

External links

Official WebsiteARS Electronica 2009 Digital CommunitiesBlogging In Bambara With ManenoWeb Hosting & Dedicated Servers
Sub-Saharan Africa Blog hosting services Internet properties established in 2008 Swahili words and phrases Crowdsourcing