I am building a symfony based website, which has users and admins. Normally, I would let them use the same app, and display different pages for the admins by checking their permissions (I am using sfGuard plugin).
The Admins use the same modules as the other users, but the views are different. The admins can search for all user data and can see all the users at once. They can also edit anything.
But I am wondering if it would be better to use a backend app only for Admins? That’s the way the jobeet tutorial does it. So the admins would go to this backend app instead of the other one that everyone else uses….
What would be the pros and cons of each approach?
Thanks.
If you’re not using the backend admin generator, I’d keep everything to the frontend application, as I don’t see major benefits for having a separate backend app in this case. You can separate the user experience for normal users and admins inside the frontend application just the same, all the way from their own login pages to “admin mode” template views etc. sfDoctrineGuard comes with groups and permissions so it’s easy to set up. Plus you won’t need to duplicate frontend app settings in the backend app just to make things work the same way.