Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. I haven't been posted as much as I should on my site. My last couple of articles had long and boring one week gaps in between them. And now here I am writing another article over a week since my last one. I apologize to my regular readers. I know it's annoying to keep checking your favorite sites and RSS feeds, only to find them dusty and unattended. While this site has been looking a little abandoned lately, I assure you it's not.

You see, I am now truly happy with the front-end of my site. The front-end is of course the site you guys all see (the home page, the articles, the comments, etc). With my redesign from a few months ago I've gotten nothing but compliments from the new design from a majority of my visitors. More importantly, I'm happy with the look and feel of the front-end, but I was never really happy with the back-end. Now it's time to move onto Phase 2 of WebNV, the back-end of the site, or my administration panel.

When I started building my web site I knew right away that I would need some type of administration panel that I could log into. This panel would easily allow me to add articles, edit current articles, edit comments, etc. I mean, without this admin page, the only way I could edit content on my site would be by going directly into the database and working from there. And even though we have some nice database front-ends like phpMyAdmin, it's still a hassle.

When I first started building the admin panel I just needed to be able to add, edit, and delete articles, topics, and comments. I mean, that's the basics of most blogs right? But as my web site grew and got more dynamic, so did my admin panel. It now allows me to add, edit, and delete multiple users, as well as editing your own settings. I can also edit general site settings like whether to allow comments, or use a captcha. But my favorite functions include the ones that allow me to add, edit, and delete pages. Another function includes the ability to add, edit, and delete blocks (like PHP-Nuke blocks) from various site pages.

So that's pretty much what I've been doing these past couple of months, putting some finishing touches on my admin panel. For those that are curious, I posted some screen shots below of it. I do eventually plan to release a demo site, where anyone can access and log into the admin panel and mess around, try it out, and give me some feedback. Plus it would be nice to have a site like that out there on the Internet to show off to friends, family, and potential employers. Anyways, enjoy the screens and be on the look out for my demo site which I'd like to have available in the next few weeks. Cheers!

First, we have your basic login screen. Nothing too fancy.

We also have a personal settings page which allows your users to edit their stuff.

For the admin of the site, we have some basic site settings. This is still a work in progress (ie, more options will be added).

One of the most important pages, the add article page, which easily allows you to create, preview, and publish articles.

My favorite function that I created for this site, was the ability to add, edit, and delete pages on my site dynamically.

Finally, copying from PHP-Nuke and their 'Blocks', I created my own blocks function that easily allows me to add, edit, move, and delete blocks from the various pages of my site. The blocks I'm referring to are close to the bottom of my pages and contain stuff like recent articles, recent comments, random photo, etc. Here's my block settings page.

On a final note, the WYSIWYG or HTML editor that you see on the comments form, or the screens above was not created by me. It's a free editor called FCKeditor that you can check out if interested. I've been using it for awhile and like it a lot.