When developing for the Zend Framework is it common for developers to have to build a custom backend admin area for each unique app? Or is there a popular 3rd party backend tool people are using to manipulate your app's database?
I'm thinking of learning ZF but what stands out is how do you keep an eye on what users are doing with your app?
I tend to create an 'AdminController' specific to the application if there are too many administrative functions, or an Admin Module if there are (or there is a real possibility for the number of administrative functions to increase).
ZendFramework is not a Toolkit to create specific Application with users and, lets say articles etc. So there can't be such a 3rd party tool. I would create a admin module, not a controller, because that means you have just 1 File for all admintasks.
You have two basic choices:
In either case, I use a Front Controller plugin to swap the layout to admin.phtml so I have a different look and feel for my administration system. This is of course, optional :)
Well, in general I consider it enough to manipulate my db with let's say phpmyadmin or directly in my IDE (Aptana).
For the tasks I want to allow certain administrators to perform online I write an admin controller. Such tasks are mostly so specific, complex, dynamic that some kind of generic generator system wouldn't probably help a lot.
Still, there is at least one so called 3rd party tool I know of which falls into the category you're mentioning in your question.