Content Management. website or intranet?

[Skywarden]

Greetings - I'm building a site in PHP with a database backend that will require some administration pages to handle various functions. In the past, I have simply added an "admin" section to the website, and password protected it. I'm wondering what the pros/cons of having the administration section on the website itself (if secured properly) vs. having it on the internal network (still password protected) are. On one hand, I see the advantage of being able to update the site from anywhere if the admin section is on the website. On the other, there are less security concerns if the section is on our internal network. What have some of you done for CMS on your sites? I've never heard one way or another what the common practice is for this.

[enigma1]

In terms of security the risk is the same I believe. If one of the workstations in your local env, has malware is the same as someone hacks your site.

In terms of programming you may run into issues with the local admin (if you keep a local storage). For example browsers, web-editors etc, sometimes strip out or add the local server urls and it's hard to identify before you actually see it rendered on a different domain and keep remapping.

In terms of hosting many hosts only allow the localhost to perform internal functions (like database, or e-mails) so you will have overhead and latencies to setup everything through the standard protocols and complicates security.

Personally I use the web for both. But I keep the local option open so in my local system I can do administration remotely. Either case you can update the site remotely from anywhere as long as you have access to the net.

The CMS not sure if it matters, because you will need to write custom code.