People familiar with other webpage editors (Ex. FrontPage, Dreamweaver) or other CMS software (Ex. Wordpress, Joomla) sometimes wonder how to access the admin area or "back-end" of Drupal, or how to preview their changes and see the "front-end" that visitors would see.

  • Drupal provides a unified interface, so there is no such distinction.
  • If you are looking at the homepage of your website as an administrator, themer, or coder, you are previewing it from the perspective of that role. Logging out will allows you to view the page from the perspective of an anonymous site user. There are different modules available that allow you to view the site in different roles.
  • Drupal pages usually look similar for administrators/editors and anonymous users, but different features and menu items may be visible depending on permission settings.
  • Authenticated users (those with appropriate permissions) will have an administrative menu and will see the 'edit' tabs on pages and blocks. That's often the biggest difference between editor and end user perspectives. Anonymous users (those who aren't authenticated) might be denied access to some or all of a site and its functions depending on permissions assigned by the administrator.

We find that people who have never used a CMS before are often less confused about this concept than people who have previously used other systems where the 'input' screens look totally different from the 'output' screens, according to the Drupal usability tests from the University of Baltimore in 2008. It's an un-learning thing.

However, you can still set an 'Administration theme' (in the settings Administer › Site configuration > Administration theme or Administer > Appearance in D7 and D8) so that your admin pages look different from the front end. It will still behave the same way, but it may help if your public presentation theme is highly graphic or stylized.