I might not be understanding what your wanting to do exactly.

You want to have one users table for the front end and then a different users table for the back end?

If so then, yes you should be able to do that. You could set up the admin in a module then have something like admin\login vs user\login the admin module would be set up to use the admin users table the other the normal users table. Or if you didn't want total separation of auth code then just set up a secondary authentication in the exiting login code or a flag on the admin form or ... there are many ways to do this.

yes - this is exactly what i want to do - from security purposes...i don't want the "regular"users to have accounts in the same database as the backend admins. is this too paranoid?

In anycase - from what I saw in laravel - the "auth" always assumes a single table. how do I setup a "module"?

Thanks

I also want to know how might we go about it.

I think it is too paranoid to care about them being in the same table. Just have a flag/group to check whether they can view certain routes. You can modify the auth filter with the additional check.

Or you could look at Confide and Entrust, two very good packages for permissions and users.