Title: BackendPro
Version: 0.6.1
Homepage: BackendPro Project at Kaydoo.co.uk
Download From: Assembla

Well its finished (well up to a point I am happy to release it). BackendPro is finally ready for its first initial public trials. Now some of you I know have been waiting for me to release it while others don’t have a clue what I am talking about. So lets have a look at it shall we?

What is it?
BackendPro is a control panel for developers written in PHP for the CodeIgniter framework. Its not like a CMS where it provides you with a full working system but it does provide you with part of a system. What I mean by this is it provides you with functionality to do all the simple repetitive tasks like authentication, permissions and a basic look and feel for your websites control panel. So using your current PHP and CodeIgniter knowledge you can use BackendPro to built a fully working website quickly since you can concentrate on your application instead of the bits to manage the system.

What can it do then?
It can do lots, not everything I have planned, there is still a lot I want to add like language detection, better error logging (with viewing features) but its been quite a while and I wanted to release something so people can try it. At the moment it has all the following features.

* User Authentication with registration and account activation
* User Permissions by using Access Control Lists (Has Access Control area to manage your websites access permissions)
* Site Preferences (Stored in a database with simple to use UI to update and change preferences)
* Improved Asset Library (Means loading assets onto pages is quick and simple, also has asset caching to speed up the loading of asset files)
* PHP to javascript variable conversion (Easy way to pass PHP variables into your javascript scripts)
* ReCAPTCHA
* Status messages (Can display info/success/warning/error messages to the user)
* Breadcrumb trail creation

For screenshots visit my blog post on BackendPro

Where do I get it?
You can currently get it off my project page and also there are screenshots on my blog if anyone wants.

Is there a Demo?
Yes there is, you can access it here online. Follow the instructions on the login page to get full access. It is reset at 3am (GMT) every day so if it doesn’t work one day check back the next (someone may have been playing about with it).

So there we go, download it and give it a go. Do read the installation instructions first, since its a developer control panel it doesn’t have protective features on everything, so without knowing what your doing you could corrupt the system (The reason for this is otherwise it takes away your ability to make the system how you want). You have been warned.

Sorry if my question looks stupid, your application looks very cool and interesting but I can’t figure out how I should use it in a real world web development. What does it really bring and how in a real web development would you use it? I mean for example in a real world application I will code a back-end for the client (user) and a front-end website, why should I have a developer back-end, I really can’t find in what it can be useful for me.

OK, you have a backend for a website, which has the same things like authentication and such. This basically provides you with the backend, and also provides you with tools to make developing your site quicker. I know from experience when I’m making a website it needs certain things like nearly all sites need, but since you don’t have a lot of time and since the client isn’t bothered too much on the backend it suffers and you rush something off quickly.

Hopefully with this and I am currently using it for some websites, it means you don’t need to do all the annoying little tasks you normally do. You don’t need to have an OK backend. I have hopefully made it in a way which you can design your clients website around it and using it. The developer part basically means it has extra tools to make your life easier while creating the site.

I agree its not going to be for everyone, but I look at it for my personal use as a kind of extension to CodeIgniter. CodeIgniter makes my coding fun, but what I hated doing was all the little tasks, so this tries provide a solution.

and how does this provide something better than the more powerful CodeExtinguisher? Apart from a nicer-lookin CP?

Sorry adamp1, still not understand in witch parts of my coding it can help me, specially when this area is not password protected, I must again do an authorization system to login in it. Maybe some tutorial or some screencast would help?

i think maybe i’m dumb too

this backend manage public page ?, i don’t understand the A-B-C of the process.

You manage user for what ?, what a registered user can do with your backend ?

see ya around !

grrrrrrrrreat work!

@php_penguin: It doesn’t provide something more powerful than CodeExtinguisher. It provides something totally different. I look at CodeExtinguisher and to me it comes as a simple administration application to quickly build basic functionality. Whereas BackendPro doesn’t assume really anything. It provides you with tools to create a custom administration area. It also has more advanced features, like access control lists. Which I don’t know if you have used are very powerful for managing user permissions. Some things may be simple to implement, but that’s exactly the point, there done for you.

@elitemedia: OK so it can help create a administration area quickly. The authentication system can handle front end logins also. Depending on how you setup access permissions. This is why they are so powerful compared to the groups say used in FreakAuth. Most of the code I was making was to be able to manage permissions in an easy to use way, if you look at phpgacl I think you will find the system very hard to understand and unclear exactly what’s happening, so I build a management area for the permissions which makes it simple to see exactly who has access to what. I will have a think about a tutorial, but since the system isn’t designed to do any specific job, it can do almost anything I don’t get what it would be a tutorial on.

@sikkle: Yes it can manage front end pages. OK ill give some examples of how it could be used.
  A - You want a passworded area for an online contact address book for a client. So straight off using BackendPro you have the login, you have the ability to create permissions (I.E only allow some people to delete contacts etc). You can then build your application using the ‘developer’ tools provided. Now yes you could just password a folder, but then you cannot restrict access to different areas of the website easily.
  B - You want a custom built portal which allows admins to manage the portal but also allows users to register and store personal details and say post articles (I don’t know could be anything). So straight from the start you have the tools to do everything, you can get started straight onto the actual logic behind your application instead of trawling through authentication code.

I don’t think people can quite see what I mean by a developer tool, so I will give an example. Right so how many websites do you use sytelsheets and scripts? Normally you have a set of defaults you want on every page, and then say on a certain page you need to load an extra javascript file to do something flash (but don’t want to load it all the time since its not needed anywhere else). OK so normaly you would have to add all the sylesheets to the header view file, but how do you manage the one of loading of the script? You would have to pass it as a string, now if you do this a few times it just gets messy. So what happens if I said BackendPro has a tool to make doing this sort of thing very fast and easy, and also decrease load time of your pages. So from one tool (a) its simpler for you (b) you get a better result. Isn’t that a good tool? Btw this is the asset caching feature.

The only thing I can try to say to explain it is its its a tiny bit like a framework. It provides you with the very basic tools needed to make a fully working website. it doesn’t do it for you, it doesn’t assume anything, it just makes your job of making a website (what ever kind) simpler.

Nice… was waiting for the release for some time now… ” Lets see what this baby can do… ”

hey adamp1, this looks really nice and really useful too.

What i think it is missing is a guide on how to code with it to make it effective.

How do i structure my pages for the auth to work?

What code do i need to include in my pages to allow the auth to work?

I’m sure if i can spend some time looking at it i can work it out, but it would be easier if you provided a couple of “front end” pages as examples.

I have tried to explain everything like its features, but as you said maybe some examples are needed. What I would say is have you read the parts of the user guide on Public and Admin Controllers? And also the section Restricting Access to a Controller/Method in the Access Control part of the user guide.

Basically with those two parts you can setup controllers and control user access to them.

I know my user guide is probably lacking at the moment I tried to explain everything but its maybe too technical at the moment.