About a year ago I introduced you to the back-end/administration panel for WebNV (check it out here). And about six months after that I did the same thing, though this time showing you updates and whatnot (check it out here). So here I am, six months later, showing you guys the latest version of my administration panel. Introducing NiBuM.

Don't ask where the word NiBuM came from because I won't tell you. Instead, let's look at some screenshots of my administration panel. I'm also toying with the idea of doing some screencasts to kind of give you guys a more realistic feel of the application. As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.

Click on the following images to see the full sized/framed screenshot.

Dashboard

Starting with your common homepage, we have the Dashboard. Only, this dashboard isn't so common. Like any dashboard, this one can show you your site's overall statistics and provide common links to different areas of the site. But unlike most dashboards, this one let's you completely customize it. Think about iGoogle's personalized page, or Microsoft's personal Live page, or even My Yahoo's personalized page.

Like those personalized pages, NiBuM's dashboard allows you to add, rearrange, minimize, and remove different panels/widgets. You can also add RSS feeds here and download additional panels that were created for this administration panel. Along with an auto-login feature, this dashboard can become your browser's home page. It became mine.

This page still has lots and lots of work to do, but it's getting there...at what seems to be an extremely slow pace.

Article Management

Most of the lists in NiBuM have undergone a major overhaul, both design and development wise. The site article list is one of them. Like most of the lists in this application, this one is powered by AJAX. That means when you adjust your list's display settings, or navigate to the next/prev page, only the list gets updated and not the entire page. This of course saves on tons of time and bandwidth while managing your articles.

If I do do a screencast, then this feature along with creating/editing articles will probably be one of the first ones.

Editing an Article

With the help of my new favorite WYSIWYG editor, TinyMCE, creating and modifing articles has become a snap. This page has been completely redesigned with lots of new features added. Here's a quick list of article options:

• A toggle button to disable/enable the WYSIWYG editor
  
• A preview button to check out your article before publishing it (work in progress)
• Multiple publishing types (public, registered, private, password) (work in progress)
• Auto-publish feature (work in progress)
• Expire article / disable comments after a certain amount of time
• Meta tags with auto-fill to help you find and reuse your tags
• Excerpt to post a brief little summary about the article

Over the past few months, the Create/Edit article page has been given the most attention. There are still more things I want to add and things to fix, but since this will probably be the most used area for anyone using this application, then it should receive the most attention. I want to eventually add an auto-save or recovery feature, but I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do that. UPDATE: Auto-save and recovery feature has been added. A lot easier to do than I thought it would be.

Comments Management

Like the article list above, the comment list has received a whole bunch of updates. Again, it is build via AJAX. So any page navigation, display changes, or actions performed on selected comments will be done quickly on the back-end, without reloading the entire page.

I've also added a few items to the list. One is a status icon that quickly lets me see if a comment is approved, awaiting moderation, or spam. Another icon shows me if the comment is from a visitor or site member. But one of the coolest things I added is the Quick Reply option. Click to see the Quick Reply screenshot

Using this option will open a little inline window that allows you to quickly reply to a user's comment. This saves you from having to go to your site, finding the comment in the article, and replying to it there. Since I've implimented this, I've yet to use the comment form on my site's article page.

Access Groups

One of the most painfully annoying and confusing things to setup was my site's access/permissions/security groups. NiBuM supports multiple sites, multiple users, and multiple access groups. So creating a system that grants certain users certain permissions on certain sites has been a major pain in the ass. But I believe it's finally done and solid.

With each installed site you can create and edit different access groups. You can then make your users members of these access groups to give them specific permissions. There's still some more tweaking I'd like to do, but it's complicated and I don't want to get into it now.

Page Blocks

Finally, let's take a look at page blocks/widgets/sidebar items. This page has also undergone some major improvements. For one, assigning a position to your block is as easy as dragging and dropping. In this screenshot we're looking at the blocks layout for my Archive page. My current site template allows me to put blocks on the left, right, or bottom side of the page. I can just simply drag and drop the blocks to change their layout and order.

I can also edit the block's content by clicking on the 'edit' button for them and get a nice little inline window to modify it (click here for screenshot).

So that's all I have for you guys right now. Like I mentioned above, I'm planning on doing some screencasts here in the future, so keep checking back here for those. And as always, comments and feedback are welcome. I'd like to say that I'd eventually release a demo of this web application, and I'd also like to say that someday I might release this or first open it up for some private beta testing, but I still have a ton of work to do before I can see that happening. Until then...