Custom admin UI approach

[hellomoto]

How do you guys go about designing custom admin areas for your websites/applications, for when the default page tree just isn't practical? Do you customize the actual admin area provided for client users that hides all the things they aren't concerned with, or do you just create a new admin area altogether, as you would any other frontend template, but with protected access? so as to not hack up the admin too much and leave it intact? What do you all prefer to do for your custom admin UI? I feel like the latter would be much quicker and easy with the API. Thoughts?

[Mike Rockett]

I'm one to prefer simplicity - which is what the current admin environment provides. That said, perhaps you'd like to check out Process Dashboard?

[hellomoto]

I've seen that, but I haven't tried it. Probably should.

[Macrura]

with a combination of Lister Pro, admin custom pages, and admin custom files you can really extend the backend..

check out some of those modules and also maybe some of the tutorials.

i used dashboard on one project, but then when listerpro came out, it got to be so easy to make custom listings of processwire objects (because you can filter on anything), that the dashboard was no longer necessary, in that case; the only thing i ended up having on my dashboard that i couldn't do with lister was a calendar; but turned out they didn't need it anyway; i would still use dashboard if i wanted to include a page in the admin with charts, calendars, feeds, and other items that couldn't be represented in the lister; however with admin custom pages, you can make any page you want in the backend; the dashboard was helping out with getting it to be the first page loaded when you login;

[hellomoto]

Thanks. I'm still mulling around on different parts of this anyway, but will definitely give the Dashboard a try, sounds like a good place to start.

[benbyf]

Be great to be directed to or to make a tutorial for admin themes and extending

[hellomoto]

ProcessAdminCustomPages works wonders.

[renobird]

Buried in a topic is a small example module I posted for creating a simple process module.