idea of how admin area should look like??

[seisei]

can somebady here give me an idea of what an admin area shoul look like. and what does it contains? does it have to be the same interface as the members area? cause ive made my members area perfectly neat but with the admins area i dont have an idea of what it should contain and how does it shoul be. thank you for those who will reply. i will gladly appreciate it thank you very much.

[bpat1434]

Usually it's however you see it fit to lay out what you need in an easy-to-understand manner.

For example, the vBulletin administration pages have a side navigation on the left, and the content on the right. At the top of the content is a small little bit denoting the current forum version and the most recent code available from vB.

A project I used to work on had about 5 buttons in the admin panel, and that was it. You could choose from 5 things to do (add stories, add photos, update stories, etc.).

It doesn't have to "look" like anything if you don't want it to. Half of the challenge to putting together a good PHP application is user interface. How can you best design your program so that a user can seemingly "just know" how to do what they need with little reliance upon the help functionality.

[Weedpacket]

Several of my past admin interfaces were built on site prototype designs that had been proposed for the sites themselves but subsequently rejected. Nothing wrong with them, just that others were better. Meant that - for no additional design cost - the design and layout were fully developed and instantly recognisable in terms of branding, while still being instantly distinguishable from the actual sites they managed for.

What the interfaces did depended on what was on the site and what the clients wanted to control.

[seisei]

thank you for your responses! but please can you tell me where can i see some samples of what admin area should look like though i can picture out your description but i cant decide what i will do until i see a real sample for myself. thank you very much. taijen arigato! by the way my site is it related. solution provider.

[NogDog]

If you go to www.opensourcecms.com you can try out the admin interfaces of the all the various applications they demo there, and see how each organizes things and lays them out. Just select an application you'd like to view, then click the "admin login" link. (The list the login/password right below the link.)

MOD EDIT: I believe NogDog meant "...cms" in the URL, not "...csm". *shakes head* Old people, these days, y'know...

:p

[seisei]

when i try to view the link you gave. i only see lots of google ads. enwei thank you very much for replying to my post.

[bpat1434]

Interesting... I see "Open Source CMS" "Try before you install"

[seisei]

where did you see it bpat1434??

[NogDog]

Look in the left column under the "CMS Demo" heading. There is a hierarchical menu with all of the different applications you can "test drive" there.

[seisei]

now i see it! aw lots of demos! thank you very much. ill probably find an idea with lots of this. thanks again nogdog!

[dougal85]

For me an Admin panel needs to be clear, clean and quite simple in terms of layout.

keep the fancy design for the users and aim for easy of access and use for the admin.

One thing I always like is a list at the side of frequently used areas, kind of like short cuts. Although - you might not need this if the admin section is small.