CMS best practice on CI

[eluser]Mr. Pickle[/eluser]
Just a few idea's with some different approaches:

1.
What I always prefer in this case is to just have an extra application for the admin.
Folder structure for example like this:
/frontend/
/controllers/
/models/
/views/
/admin/
/controllers/
/models/
/views/
/[webroot]/
-index.php (linked to admin application folder)
/admin/
- index.php (linked to admin application folder)

Of course you have to want to seperate the two applications.
I can understand that certain system share so much that you better want to have them in one application.
(of course you can always use symlinks to have certain files / libraries / etc. shared)

2.
Another way can be to have the controllers that should be behind admin-protection (username/password) to extend an Admin_Controller and normal controllers to extend directly CI_Controller or an Public_Controller in case you want to have an overall controller for your public parts.
In this Admin_Controller you can build your security.

3.
If it's just about having clean and logical url's you can also choose to re-route the url e.g. /admin/news/add/ to any controller/method you want (e.g. /admin/news_add/)