# Administration section advice

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/administration-section-advice/112518>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 20, 2007, 3:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/administration-section-advice/112518 "2007-08-20T15:26:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pallan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@pallan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pallan)\
**Post date:** [August 20, 2007, 3:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/administration-section-advice/112518/1 "2007-08-20T15:26:31Z")

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Hi all,

I am looking for some advice on where to put the administrative  
interfaces for an ecommerce site we are planning for. The debate right  
now is with the idea of having the administrative portion as part of the  
public application. Here are the two trains of thought:

1. The admin section should be part of the full application. The primary  
argument against this is security. Having the admin section as part of  
the public application would provide an access point to backend of the  
application and increases the risk of someone breaking into the site.

2. The admin section should be it own standalone application that shares  
the models with the public application. This would allow the admin to  
be run on the company intranet which is more secure than login form that  
would exist in 1. However, separating the apps would make caching more  
difficult as all model updates would happen in one application, but it  
would affect caches in both applications.

I have simplified things here. In the first choice there are a large  
number of options for securing the application to prevent _evil_ users  
from accessing it. In the second, we may misunderstand caching and the  
problem outlined may not be a problem at all. That said, it would be  
great to hear from anyone on what they would do. I am always curious as  
to the community’s opinion on architectural matters.

Thanks!

Peer
