I have used Panels before in D6 and version 2 of Panels, but only in a very simple way (no contexts or variants). Here is what I am trying to do, and I would much appreciate some guidance on if it is possible and if so how to go about it.
I have a web site with Articles on it, and a Forum. Rather than have users comment on the Articles directly, I would rather that the first comment on an article should initialise a new Forum thread linked to the article. My idea for setting about this was as follows:
1) Modify the Forum content type to include an Entity Reference field
2) Create a Panel Page which displays Article type nodes
3) On the Article Panel Page, include a pane which holds the form fields for creating a Forum node. These form fields should be initialised so that:
a) The title of the new thread is "Discuss %title of originating node"
b) The Entity Reference field is initialized with the %nid of the originating node (and invisible to the user)
c) This pane is only visible if there is no existing Forum thread linked to the Article
4) On the Article Panel Page, include a pane with a View that displays the Forum thread linked to the article, visible only if such a thread exists.
I hope this is sufficiently comprehensible!
In effect, I am trying to reproduce something of the functionality of the Discuss This module.
I have also asked the question on StackOverFlow, but this is the fount of all wisdom for panels so I prefer here!