This is some work I've been doing at Kyan to streamline starting Padrino projects and creating admin pages.
This repo is meant to be cloned into a generators folder in the project root, where it overrides the default Padrino admin to add some convenience features.
I'm using a gist to get things started for each project.
padrino g project mysuperapp.com --app MySuperApp --template https://gist.github.com/1761898
Assumes use of postgres, ruby 1.9.2, git, bundler
Once the project has generated use the following steps to generate an admin page
padrino g model NewsArticle title:string body_mce:text main_img:string publish:boolean sample_file:string position:integer publication_date:datetime
padrino rake ar:migrate
padrino g kyan_admin_page NewsArticle
padrino s
Visit http://0.0.0.0:3000/admin
Use it.
Field names with the following endings do special things
_img makes an image upload
_file makes a file upload
_date makes a date selector
A field called position will act like a list and allow the model to be ordered
Most of the standard relationships (has one, belongs to etc) are handled by default.