The Need for Administrative Interface
August 20th, 2008 @ 8:25 pmQuick – you have a tight budget and you need to save money. What do you cut? If you said the admin interface, you are like many clients I’ve had but strangely, you’d still be wrong.
Lots of people figure that the public facing portion of the website is the most important. And for the most part, they’d be right. The public facing portion should be clean, streamlined, and intuitive. But forgetting the administration interface is like having a sleek sportscar with absolutely no controls. Wouldn’t make much sense, would it?
The administrative interface of any website is the steering wheel that drives the site. The sheer cost of creating the interface is far less than the total cost over time of asking a developer to update content each time you wish to change it.
I’ve had a number of clients who opted not to build administrative interfaces, opting for the lower out-of-the-box cost. What they came to realize was that the higher administrative costs were the trade off they faced by their decision.
When building something as critical and expensive as a full website, it is critical too that there be investment into the infrastructure for maintaining it. Anything less is simply throwing good money after bad; the cost may be lower at the front end, but later on down the road the cost will be astronomical.
The original work of Brandon Savage.
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Categories: Web Architecture, Web DesignTags: , architecture, design decisions, value, Web DesignThere are currently no comments.
Web developer, amateur photographer, traveller, and amatuer chef. Expect to find me writing code, visiting new places or trying a new recipe. I live with my wife in Olney, Maryland. Follow Me On Twitter!- Excited About PHP Again
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