The folks at Thoughtbot released a new gem for administrative dashboards. It’s named Administrate and though it’s new, it’s well-designed and useful. Developers often use the ActiveAdmin or RailsAdmin gems to build admin dashboards, but I’ve never added them to Rails Composer. The Upmin gem has been a better alternative and it’s an option in Rails Composer when you’ve selected options for authentication and authorization.

The Administrate gem is a welcome addition, so I’ve added it to Rails Composer. Like Upmin, it’ll be a choice when you’ve selected options for authentication and authorization. If you’d like to try it, build an application with Rails Composer:

$ rails new myapp -m https://raw.github.com/RailsApps/rails-composer/master/composer.rb

Choose “Build a RailsApps example application.”

Build a starter application? 1) Build a RailsApps example application ...

Pick the “rails-devise-roles” starter application:

Choose a starter application. ... 7) rails-devise-roles ...

And you’ll see an option to select Administrate or Upmin:

Admin interface for database? 1) None 2) Thoughtbot Administrate 3) Upmin

You can also select Administrate or Upmin when you build a custom starter application.

Chris Oliver of GoRails has a screencast that shows how to customize Administrate. Build an application with Rails Composer and try it out.

My thanks to everyone who supported the Kickstarter for Rails Composer. Your support gave me the opportunity to add Bootstrap Templates to Rails Composer. I hope you like the new option to use the Administrate gem.