Open Outreach is very promising and a great way for small organization to get started - especially if they don't have deep drupal skills. That said, I find the block architecture very confusing. Using Blocks, Context and Panels often requires changes in several modules. Furthermore, it's hard to get a representative model of what is going on since the blocks are defined in several places. I suggest only using Panels (or Display Suite!) since it can support context quite well. It would make it much easier to adjust. I can do it myself, but would like to be consistent with base development.

Thanks for a great contribution. S.

Comments

nedjo’s picture

nedjo
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Thanks for the encouragement!

Yes, block positioning is a key issue. See #1664956: Make Open Outreach Panopoly-based and the older issue #1331150: Decide Open Outreach page layout approach for e.g. home page and section pages.

After tons of refactoring for Apps support (RC2) and Apps compatible (RC3 and RC4) I'm needing to get back to priorities like CRM and location features.

A first step for switching to Panels might be #1737024: Add a "sitewide_sidebar" minipanel.

As well as blocks, we're using Context for breadcrumb and active menu item handling and would need replacements for those.

Ideas or contributions very welcome here.

sonicthoughts’s picture

sonicthoughts commented

IMO I don't see breadcrumbs or menu changing that often and context or regular blocks would be fine (could also be done in Panels I think.) Arranging content blocks/views is a pretty common task. I just think Panels would be the most intuitive, consistent and well documented (Display Suite would be great too.) Although Panopoly would be an ideal UI for the content admin,it's fairly new - perhaps that could be a longer term goal. Panels (perhaps using integrated styles) could be a stepping stone.

sonicthoughts’s picture

sonicthoughts commented

At this point I think Panels has everything we need and we are going to move away from context. having both has caused a lot of mis-understandings and I think panels and context are trying to accomplish the same things. I found this comparison helpful:Comparison of Layout editors .

nedjo’s picture

nedjo
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Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

No plans to switch to Panels beyond its current usage. We could reconsider the question for a future version. Closing for now.