By xpersonas on

I've been working with Drupal for a while now. I haven't used Panels yet though. I'd like almost an elementary explanation of panels. Having not used them, I have a hard time understanding what makes panels different from blocks.

Anyone care to help me out on that?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

kevinquillen’s picture

kevinquillen commented

You can override the node view template with panels, which can provide various layout presentations of content. Blocks can only go in predefined regions. Otherwise, you'd have to hack up your theme to support multiple regions within the content area of a node. Panels does this out of the box, without messing with the theme.

So, you can create a panel, and have a two column brick layout of content in about 2 minutes. Panels also lets you drop in panel panes or blocks from Views, regular blocks, or custom node content.

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read my thoughts

cayenne’s picture

cayenne commented

Panels cover the entire node, or even replace the entire page. So you can dynamically specify stuff (views, blocks, nodes) at lotsa different spots in the page layout.

Think of it as Powerpoint when all you've had till now is Word.

:)

yelvington’s picture

yelvington commented

Panels can do many things, but begin with this: Ordinarily with Drupal, there is a 1:1 correspondence between blocks and regions. With Panels, you can create as many special pages as you want, with as many combinations of blocks as you want, in any layout that you want.

Beyond that, you can place several types of items that aren't blocks onto pages.

In addition to stand-alone pages, you can override the normal display of nodes and views (such as taxonomy lists). You can create pages whose content is defined by arguments that are passed. You can map access to roles.

I can't imagine undertaking a complex site project without Panels and Views. Earl Miles is the uberdude.