UserFrosting 0.1

By Alex Weissman

Welcome to UserFrosting, a secure, modern user management system for web services and applications. UserFrosting is based on the popular UserCake system, written in PHP. UserFrosting improves on this system by adding a sleek, intuitive frontend interface based on HTML5 and Twitter Bootstrap. We've also separated the backend PHP machinery that interacts with the database from the frontend code base. The frontend and backend talk to each other via AJAX and JSON.

Why UserFrosting?

This project grew out of a need for a simple user management system for my tutoring business, Bloomington Tutors. I wanted something that I could develop rapidly and easily customize for the needs of my business. Since my prior web development experience was in pure PHP, I decided to go with the PHP-based UserCake system. Over time I modified and expanded the codebase, turning it into the UserFrosting project.

Why not use Node/Drupal/Django/RoR/(insert favorite framework here)?

I chose PHP because PHP is what I know from my prior experience as a web developer. Additionally, PHP remains extremely popular and well-supported. I chose not to use a framework because I wanted something that I could understand easily and develop rapidly from an existing PHP codebase.

Developer Features

No need to learn a special framework! The backend of UserFrosting is based on native PHP5, allowing for rapid development and deployment.
Clean separation of backend and frontend code. Easily interact with the backend via AJAX calls.
Automated installation tool for initializing the database.
Frontend built with jQuery and Twitter Bootstrap. Javascript components for typical database CRUD operations provided with this distribution!

User Features

UserFrosting offers all of the features of UserCake, plus several new ones:

Account creation/deletion from the admin interface
Admin can disable/enable individual accounts
Admin can disable/enable new account registration
Dropdown menus for easier account modifications
Client-side data validation
Default permissions for new accounts
Table view for easily editing page permissions

Screenshots

Login page

Admin dashboard (thanks to Start Bootstrap)

User list page

Create user dialog

User details

Site settings

Page management

Installation

To install, follow these instructions:

Create a database on your server / web hosting package. UserFrosting supports MySQLi and requires MySQL server version 4.1.3 or newer, as well as PHP 5.4 or later with PDO database connections enabled.
Open up models/db-settings.php and fill out the connection details for your database.
Run the UserFrosting installer at install/install.php. UserFrosting will attempt to build the database for you.
After the installer successfully completes, delete the install folder.
Register your admin account, which will by default be the first account that is registered.

Creds

The back end account management system is derived from UserCake 2.0.2, while the dashboard and admin account features are based on the SB Admin Template by Start Bootstrap. Other key frameworks and plugins used in this system are:

All components are copyright of their respective creators.

About

A secure, modern user management system based on UserCake, jQuery, and Bootstrap.

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