Each and every Ruby on Rails website typically has its own admin area. Ryan Bates (a well-known person in Rails world) says in one of his first railscasts that it is a good idea to have the same code base for admin and public area of the website. Another approach could take place, I think. And this is why:
- usually, admin area has more actions in controllers and more complex data output with variety of fields;
- public area usually has simpler output;
- having common code base for admin and public area leads to code complexity and increases the amount of access permission checks.
Thus, it is more sensible to separate admin area from public area. This way public area code will be simpler and cleaner and admin area code will do only what it's meant for. Of course, there are gems, such as activeadmin, rails_admin, etc. They allow to generate full-featured admin area. But implementation of your own custom admin area sometimes is more suitable, rather than customization of existing complex mechanism.
I'd like to tell you how to separate admin area from public area by example.