Website administration - Integrated into main website or separate section?

Question

From a usability perspective, is it better to integrate admin section on the main website or have a separate section to manage content?

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

EDIT: the application is a CMS for very non-techno friendly staff.

Answer 1

It depends on the project and part you want to administer, imho.

For example comments on newsposts should be administered in the website itself by showing a "delete" linkbutton for each comment. Otherwise the mods would have to look up the comment in the admin section => not very user friendly.

But in general I think a seperate admin section will usually be more clear to your client. You'd want them to see the site as a normal user would see it.

Answer 2

At the very least I would recommend moving all your administration files to a separate folder. That way if you're using a platform like .NET you can very easily control folder access though role and user-based web.config permissions.

Having your administration files all segregated allows you to do other things easily too, like delete them if you decide to move them to another server later. Also you can exclude them in your robots.txt file (although by putting it in the robots.txt file you will be telling other people this section exists, and robots don't have to mind this file).

Edit:

I feel like my answer missed the mark a little considering your question. Of course in-line editing is easier than going to a separate page from a usability perspective, but whenever I hear of mixing admin users with regular users giant alarm bells go off in my head.

I think that it depends on the function of the site and how intrusive it will be to your staff. Does it make sense for them to make changes while browsing the site and will they eventually become discouraged with your system because it forces them to inject unnecessary steps into their process? How long will the edits take? Does it make sense to show a completely different interface to administrators? I think an answer to this question requires a lot more understanding of what specific function you're trying to accomplish and will vary on a case by case basis.

Answer 3

I have never liked adding administration pages into the main site. It seems like it is too much of a risk from someone accidently getting access to the administration portion of the site. Even if you review the security over and over, there is always that possibility that something unexpected will happen, and it is a huge mess to clean up (what was modified, who accessed what etc. etc.). In my opinion keeping it as a seperate site is the easiest way to go.