Changing the admin panel address in Magento

For security reasons, we would prefer changing the admin panel address once we're done developing our Magento store.

Why? it's better not to let potential hackers know that we're using Magento (exploits, common vulnerabilities) and prevent Brute-force attacks on our admin panel.

The best of practices would be to place the admin panel on a private, password-protected server and SSL on the admin panel (thus, the password will also be encrypted when we login from unsecured places - let's say a coffee shop).

Anyway, changing the admin panel address is very easy in Magento.

Go to app/etc/local.xml

You will see the following code:

    <admin>
        <routers>
            <adminhtml>
                <args>
                    <frontName><![CDATA[admin]]></frontName>
                </args>
            </adminhtml>
        </routers>
    </admin>

The following line defines the admin panel entrance point (http://your-website.com/admin):

<frontName><![CDATA[admin]]></frontName>

Now you can just change "admin" to whatever entrance point you'd like.

<frontName><![CDATA[example]]></frontName>

Would change your admin panel address to http://your-website.com/example