HOW TO effectively & hierarchially (taxonomy) use Panels with Views to display nodes?

Because Panels 2 is still in deep development, there isn't yet a lot of documentation, screencasts, or tutorials on making the most of it.

There's an open issue in this queue that'll give you a rough idea of how to use it to deal with node edit forms; and there's a documentation effort in progress in the panels developers group at http://groups.drupal.org/panels -- however, that effort is currently just an outline and has no actual material.

I make various content types and assign all nodes to a taxonomy
hierarchy that starts [usually] with the basic pages like "Home",
"About", "Contact", etc... and then build the terms deeper and deeper.
That is how I filter nodes in Views and sort them by category weight.

Is this a good method?

Uh.I don't usually create a site hierarchy with taxonomy myself; I guess some people do, but that's really more something you want to do with the menu system. And you can't tag panels pages with terms, so that isn't going to be helpful here.

Furthermore, should you have panels initially inside views or
vice-versa?

Using the views bonus pack, you can have panels inside views. And you can put views within panels. It depends on what you want your page to look like, and waht the content is. There isn't a single generic answer to that question.

Thank you sooo much Merlin for responding.... I don't know how you do it all....

But here is a MILLION dollar question that boggles me (and many others I'm sure)...

Say a given view has 15 nodes. Instead of the teasers taking you to the full body, how would YOU make those nodes link to a view? The only way I can think of doing it would be to make a CCK field (View URL:) and have that replace the title's HREF. And then of course, theming.

I hope I was clear enough.....

I'm sure you are tired of hearing it by now... but your efforts are very gracious. Every minute you spend answering questions saves us all collectively HOURS.

Well, I don't think I would have a node link to a view. To me that doesn't make very much sense; a node is a specific piece of content, but a view is a selection of content. Hierarchically, a view is higher level than a node, unless you're using some kind of node relationship such that you're viewing items that are related to the node. In which case I would then embed that view within the node itself, somehow.

thanks again for your response...

how then would you link to a view? I have no problem linking to a view in a menu....

if I had a title and a body of text... and the title linked to a view.... what would the block of information be if it is a bad practice to use nodes?

Viewfield embeds a views within a node.... is this what I'm looking for?

Yes, viewfields combined with node reference would work. I have done this for a clothing website. I've created a content type for "dresses". I have also created content types that describe dresses: "Neckline" "Silhouette" "Fabric" etc. These description content types have a title, a text field for describing it "The square neckline is ...." and a viewfield that points to a view of all "dresses" that have a node reference to the "square neckline" So when you go to an individual dress node you could have "Neckline: Square" "Fabric:Silk Satin" etc, with the description linking to the "node:view" that would show ALL dresses that have a square neckline...

There may be another(easier) way to do this, but it works for me. Good luck!

We're beyond the realm of a panels issue; feel free to keep discussing this, if you need, but I believe the issue itself is done with, yes?

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.