The Joomla!^® User Experience Portal

With Alpha 1 released to the public and currently (and quite understandably) looking pretty similar on the outside to the current Joomla, is it about time that Joomla scrapped separate sessions for back end and front end?

One of the most common questions I get from clients (especially those that use a lot of web applications) is why they have to login separately to the front end and back end? Also why are there some things that are front end only, or back end only or both but look completely different?

I think that it is about time that the front end of Joomla and the back end were joined together in two ways:

1. So that it is one session - your login works for everything, not just for only back end or only front end.

2. The admin interface is more related to the front end.

The second needs a little bit more explanation. Basically, the admin UI becomes an overlaid control panel which changes complexity depending on user group or what you are doing.

So, a user who is only allowed to edit their profile would only get those options when they login - probably as an overlay and without access to the rest of the interface menus. It would be a cut down overlay and take up less screen, for instance.

A user who can edit their own articles, can get a simplified interface if they simply click edit on one of their articles, or they can get a more complicated interface by going to the "control panel" where they can create a new article, or category or whatever their permissions allow them to do.

Admins get the entire singing and dancing system if they go to the control panel, but like other users, if they are simply editing something that is already on the site, they get a smaller, simpler interface.

This sort of system is used on a lot of other content type applications, but it has alluded Joomla because of the hard separation between admin functions and front end functions.

I know this would be a huge change to Joomla, but I think it would be a major leap in both usability and in plain logical functionality.


Joss

PS: Note on logging in: With this sort of interface, once logged in, it is probably easiest to have a simple admin bar across and above the site as other applications do. But, depending on the site, a designer may not want a "login" box or even link to appear on the site for the casual visitor. The simplest way round this is as default to make a login pop up available at the address mysite.com/login (or make it customisable). This way, it is easy to get to for those that need it and is not obvious for everyone else.

I can see that it's much simpler in terms of ensuring facilities (eg "don't hide the control panel menu item!") to have the two separate.

Having said that, I'm tyring to code a component where, although I can let admin users log in to the back end I want them to see exactly the same screen that a normal user sees for certain facilities (ie they can see the screen the user is putting data into, their profile for example), and I don't really want to have separate code files (wasteful and harder to maintain), but making it work in both places has lots of little "gotchas"

Mark

Hi Mark

Yes, one of the things that made me think about this is Kunena (points at forum).

To administrate it, create new boards (categories) and so on, you need to login to the back end of Joomla. To use the forum, moderate it and so on, you need to login to the front end of Joomla separately. Any other boards system like SMF or PhpBB your one login covers you for all functionality.

Creating a single system also adds power to the ACL since group permissions can be applied to both administrative functionality and content display functionality without having one can become a mind-bogglingly complicated system of group permissions and front end access levels.

Joss

I will definitely agree with point number 1 that an admin login from the backend should be the same session as the frontend. Login twice can be a hassile. Perhaps right now it's for security reasons?

Hi Josh

I think it is purely historical - it was how Mambo was set up.

Off the top of my head I cannot think of another system that works like that though.


Joss

I had a chat on the IRC channel about it and the only current justification offered was that it makes it easier for template writers. Given the way the templating works that doesn't seem to me to be a very good reason.

I have noticed several people on there making comments to the effect that they build everything in the front end these days... I'll keep making comments about it

Hi Mark

Interestingly enough, I have been using Seblod recently, and one of the main reasons is so that I can move as much as possible to the front end for authors and editors using custom templates for each of the different forms (content types).

I am not sure how it makes it easier for template writers - if the admin was done as a popup and top toolbar, I cant see how that effects template writers one way or another (except that it may be easier to customise various parts of the admin)

Joss

Does it matter even if it's not a popup? Looks to me like everything (?) can have the template its using specified in code or in the framework.

He was saying the separation meant that frontend templates don't need the back stuff in, and vice versa, but the first paragraph still seems to gainsay that, to me.