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I'm looking for suggestions on how to "separate" a front-end and back-end without too much added complexity. The purpose is for a blog application (I know others exist, I just want to roll my own). A couple simple index/view views for a front-end with more complex (index, create, update) views on the back-end.

For example, I'm am currently building a website using the advanced template and it's working as desired: different layouts for the front-end and back-end admin area, navigating to "/admin" takes you to the admin area, etc.

However, I don't need separate authentication, don't really care about separate controller logic, don't need a "view" action on the back-end or a "create" on the front-end. Though, it would be nice to have the URL include the "/admin" prefix for those administrative functions

Is there some easier way to give myself the experience of a separate admin area without going through the added complexity of separating backend/frontend/common apps/configs?

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The simplest way of doing that is to create a module entitled admin and set up some access rules on it.

Even simpler is to create a controller called admin..

What you choose, depends on how many admin actions you need.

The advanced application template is indeed going to be overkill for the majority of Yii applications.

A careful mix of RBAC and module/controller magic will get you where you want to go, I hope. ;)

Edit:
I recommend integrating as much admin functionality into your application (views) as possible.

if (\Yii::$app->user->can('whatever')) {
    // do whatever
}

That way, the amount of stuff that the admin has to manage in the pseudo-backend can be shaved down considerably. :)

See: Yii Guide - Role Based Access Control (RBAC)

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Thanks for the thought. I had considered modules (forgot to mention it in my question) but thought perhaps there would be something else with less separation. In other words, I want to use the same models for front- and back-end. Now I'm thinking that perhaps I could reuse the "front-end" models in the back-end but I'll have to give it a try. Modules may make it easier to separate the layout/style of the admin as well...
@justinvoelker in a project of mine, I have all my models in 'common' and even the layout is shared. So the amount of stuff in the backend is truly minimal :) It is basically a place to hold a couple of third-party modules for rbac admin and user admin.
That sounds good @jacmoe. One set of models, different views for front- and back-end, the "/admin" in the URL, a separate layout and assets (css, js)... I think modules might work after all. Perhaps I just needed your answer to force me into rethinking about modules!
Had a chance to test out this sort of implementation and it will work exactly as I need it. To get the separation I needed I created a module, copied AppAsset asset bundle to AdminAsset and changed the css file it included, copied layout/main.php into my module's views directory, changed main.php to register AdminAsset instead of AppAsset, and set 'layout' => 'main' in the module config (it's null for modules by default). Back-end and front-end look totally different, only one set of models, controllers/views are separated to only contain the items they need. Perfect!
@justinvoelker that is neat :)

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