Behind every great web application lies a powerful administration area that allows the company's staff to manage the day to day aspects of their business. The are the unseen 'heart and soul' of the web application and something I both excel at and truly enjoy building.

Web Application Administration Control Panels

Most people that surf the web and use various web applications never get to see what it takes behind the scenes to keep these massive applications running. I am of course speaking of the always password protected, secure area that allows an owner or a company's staff to manage their application, content and every other aspect of their business.

From the small content management admin panels to the massive membership based database driven web application it is essential for the site's owners or staff to be able to easily handle every aspect of their business. That's where control panels come in.

Some Example web applications with control panels

If you browse through my portfolio look at the businesses listed under web application projects. Each one of these examples has a large custom built control panel, while some have multiple ones. Here are some brief descriptions of what some of them allow the business to do.

Firearm Owners Against Crime is without a doubt the largest of my custom based control panels. This Pennsylvania based political action committee needed to manage all aspects of their membership, fund raising and legislative focus. The site has a 'member control panel' which allows signed up members to update their information, manage pending legislation they wish to be notified and much, much more. The real power though is in the administration control panel. With over 75 different functions to manage their organization there's not much their control panel can't do. Here's a brief list of what they are able to do:

• Rate, comment and manage newly proposed legislation that is pulled every day from a remote website via a CRON job
• Search, add, update & remove the key terms newly proposed legislation is 'pulled' by
• Search, add, edit, remove & contact members via the interface.
• Search & email members based on their answers to various questions in their control panel as well as by their location (city, county etc)
• Manage legislator contact information and ratings
• Upload agendas, articles, and case law files
• Update and manage membership pricing, product pricing and 'FOAC bucks' (to be used when buying products)
• Export membership and legislator data into Excel compatible files for offsite use
• Manage events, rallies, and their bi-annual 'gun bash' information
• Search, add, edit, rate and remove attorney's, organizations and clubs that are listed on the site
• Update and upload voter guides
• Add, remove, edit products they sell and shipping costs to be used in their shopping cart

Household Staffing

Household Staffing is an child care and nanny employment agency based outside of Philadelphia, PA. This application allows prospective employers and candidates to sign up and log in to their respective control panels. Prospective employers have a control panel that allows them to add all relevant data about the job, their family and children as well as any other special situations that need to be considered when being matched with prospective employees. They may log back in and update all of this information any time they need to.

Job seekers also have their own control panel once they sign up where they can add all the relevant data needed to match them with an employer. This nine section control panel requires them to add all basic information so that the staff can do background checks and make sure they are legal to work in the United States.

Finally there is an admin control panel that the staff uses to match candidates to jobs. The staff may also log into both employer and employee control panels to edit or add any information needed. The admin area allows quick searches to match candidates with employers at the click of a button.

Texas Commission On State Emergency Communications (Finance & Reporting)

These two applications are both essentially nothing more than control panels as the only public 'face' of the applications is a secure log in by state employees. Each application respectively handles their own information that is required by Texas law regarding the finances and incident reports for the entire state by law enforcement.

The application has several layers of user access, from data input to supervisors clearances to legislator access. The system allows state workers to easily add required reporting to the system during a 'window' (per state law) when the data must be added. The system was built so that individual agencies (called PSAPS) are alerted when data can be added as well as to alert them when an ending date for data entry is approaching.

Finally the system allows an administrator to check all data that has been entered and if there is a problem they can 're-open' an individual PSAP's data for editing. When all data is completed for the quarter they can generate PDF reports that by law must be submitted to the statehouse.

Pat Allen & Associates

Pat Allen Associates is an upstate New York employment agency that deals with a very specific job market, namely industrial safety experts. The public website has a seven step employment application for potential candidates. Once they have completed the application staff members are alerted and the candidate is placed on everyone's new candidate 'watch list'.

The staff side of the application allows staff quick searches based on commonly searched pre-established criteria. The system also allow editing the current search query from a small side menu to allow staffers to narrow their searches. There are also advanced searches based on multiple variables including city, state, distance from the potential job and individual skill levels.

This company has been using this application since 2007 with the only change made being a conversion from a Java based application to a PHP based one.