Q:

What kind of tasks are a good use of Front Controller's plugins?

Right now I'm learning about Front Controller in ZF. I know that we can extend request flow with Front Controller's plugins by implementing methods : routerStartup, routerShutdown, dispatchLoopStartup, preDispatch, postDispatch, dispatchLoopShutdown. 
How do you use Front Controller's plugins?
What are the real world tasks that could be solved using Front Controller's plugins?

A:

Here are a few examples:

Access control (e.g. for an 'admin' section/module)
Setting layouts based on module
Assigning common variables to the view/layout
Redirecting old URLs to new equivalents

