2610 inspiring admin interfaces
This article was written by nemetral.
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Clients pay big bucks for sexy frontend designs but don’t want to be lost in ugly and unusable backends. Historically, many an administration interface had awful table-based layouts with complicated menus and unreadable data. It is time to reverse the trend: UX goes beyond frontend, and if we can code beautiful frontends, we should build beautiful backends too, all the more as backend designs are reusable. After Wordpress, Basecamp and the likes, here is an inspiring list of 10 sexy, though probably less-known, backend designs.
Hell of a sexy monk: Ekklesia360 CMS
Neat admin interface for this church-specific CMS.
Emperor of design: AIGA CMS
Probably one of the best designed admin interfaces ever: Weightshift embroidered this CSS dress for the custom CMS behing AIGA.org’s last redesign.
Duke of media-oriented CMS: Ellington CMS
Ellington is a Django-based CMS for media sites. Python hackers can benefit from this superb admin interface by using the Django web framework with astonishing auto-admin features.
Ecommerce beautified: Magento
Magento is a porwerful and well designed ecommerce web machine. Kind of a milestone.
Pure numbers: Less Accounting
Lessaccounting is an accounting online software for small businesses.
Take me to the cloud above: Mosso
Mosso is a scalable hosting cloud for web applications coded in whatever language. Easy to use and works pretty well.
Famous blogging tool: Movable Type 4
Stone Age blogging system now revamped and open-sourced with a brand new admin interface.
Harmonious CMS: Symphony
Symphony is a lightweight and flexible web publishing system for your small projects, with a white and pure admin interface.
Hosted goodness: Reflect
Reflect is a hosted website solution aimed at managing websites.
Queen of interfaces: Expression Engine 2
Colourful interface for the second release of popular CMS ExpressionEngine (coming “Summer 2008″). Congratulations to Duoh for the redesign.
Backend designs are hard to find due to restricted access: help us dig out the best hidden jowels out there by leaving a comment!
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September 3rd, 2008
9:47 pm
Huh, nice list just I don’t think I can really use some of those, because those are like new programs - but I know for example there are wordpress plugins to just change interface. If You are using one CMS why switch to another if You know one and just can change design there?
September 3rd, 2008
9:48 pm
I also recommend Habari’s admin. Your can see some screencasts here: http://habariproject.org/en/screencasts http://binarybonsai.com/interfacing-habari
September 3rd, 2008
10:00 pm
@Dainis Graveris
You’re absolutely right: Wordpress for instance has FluencyAdmin which changes the admin interface’s look and feel in a nice way.
This post is not about you changing all your CMS but is rather aimed at showing nice other CMS around so that communities makes open source CMS’s designs evolve!
September 3rd, 2008
11:18 pm
Nice list
Also I think mediatemple does its UI pretty well.
September 4th, 2008
10:59 pm
Nice and inspiring selection! Django’s automatic administration is also kind of nicely designed!
September 5th, 2008
12:30 am
This one just dropped from Collis Ta’eed on the new Theme Forest http://themeforest.net/item/quik-v1-admin-skin/17314
September 5th, 2008
12:44 am
The 2.6 admin panel for Wordpress is pretty good. 2.7 aims to be even better - http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/02/first-look-at-wordpress-27/.
September 5th, 2008
1:16 am
I love WordPress as much as the next guy but man is it’s backend ugly compared to most of these. Magento and EE2 are beautiful looking.
September 5th, 2008
2:51 am
How did WordPress not make the cut??
September 5th, 2008
4:08 am
Thanks for the props for Movable Type, but “Stone Age”, really?
MT originally launched in 2001, which as I recall is the same time as EE’s predecessor pMachine. Especially considering Movable Type’s been pretty much reinvented since then, it might be more fair to say “venerable” or “pioneering”!
Appreciate the recgonition, though — MT’s always had one of the best CMS UIs around, and we’ve even gotten nice credit from other CMSes over the years for influencing their designs as well.
September 5th, 2008
6:49 am
You’re really not including Squarespace? (!?!) Check out the admin:
http://www.scrnshots.com/screenshots/search?q=squarespace
Seriously.
September 5th, 2008
12:56 pm
where is WORDPRESS?????
September 5th, 2008
2:13 pm
Thanks for your suggestions. This list being aimed at hightlighting less-known interfaces, I did not include neither Wordpress nor Basecamp. Of course Wordpress is sexy too, especially since release 2.5. This blog runs on Wordpress and I’m a total fan of this CMS! But on the other hand I don’t like lists where you know what you’ll find inside just by looking at the title, so here the surprise was to omit Wordpress and look around for other interfaces.
September 6th, 2008
6:32 pm
Check out Trellis Desk from http://www.accord5.com/trellis
Cool backend IMHO.
September 12th, 2008
11:04 pm
my suggestion: http://www.sandoba.de/themes/sandobade/images/press/pr_cpshop_20081_2.png (also cms / shopping cart software, http://www.sandoba.de/)
September 28th, 2008
10:14 am
Mosso has the best interface however they charge a bomb for the service. Its US $100 a month !
May 11th, 2009
12:30 pm
Hey, check this one:
http://demo.cs-cart.com/admin.php
Looks realllly amazing!
July 27th, 2009
9:45 pm
For me the best UI i’ve seen in a long time is Campaignmanager. Simple, Clean and completely focused on UX