If the content is the "heart" of a good CMS, then the Administrator Control Panel is surely the "brain". It's the piece that lets all the other pieces do their jobs. Maintaining users, adjusting permissions, approving Articles, and viewing site settings and stats are all key aspects of the Control Panel. These are the pieces we will set up in this chapter, along with giving you a basis to extend these for your own site.
This chapter will cover the following:
Creating the basic site settings table
Creating the BLL and DAL classes
User account management
Article administration
Basic site reporting
Search Engine Optimization
Most CMS sites have a number of settings that you can configure from within the Control Panel. These are typically the Site Name (as it appears on the header), the Site Image (again from the header), and the Footer text. In addition to these three, you will often also see settings to maintain the Theme, as well as a...